


Peanut Butter Popcorn and Pine-Scented Soap

by Princess_Aleera



Series: Stark Spangled Hawks [4]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alpha!Steve, Alpha!Tony, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Asexual Character, Asexual Relationship, Assassins & Hitmen, Beta!Phil, Brainwashing, Communication Failure, Complicated Relationships, Cuddling & Snuggling, Established Relationship, Gender Issues, Genderqueer Character, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mpreg, Multi, Other, Polyamory, Scents & Smells, Threesome - M/M/M, omega!Clint
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-08
Updated: 2016-04-03
Packaged: 2018-03-16 23:08:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 34,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3506201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princess_Aleera/pseuds/Princess_Aleera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Where a person from Steve's past puts their plans on temporary hold, Clint meets another assassin he has too much in common with, and everything gets a lot more complicated.</p>
<p>
  <i>It's a pretty nice date, all things considered, until Steve gets shot in the chest.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Writing this is slow, so the updates will be the same, but I wanted you guys to know and see that it is in fact happening. And it's gonna be long. 
> 
> As usual, heed the warnings in the individual chapters, and welcome to Clint's POV. Hope you'll like it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Graphic depiction of violence, character death (technically), bloody imagery.

“It's good for you,” Steve says in that particularly _annoying_ indulgent tone of his. “Get out a little, stretch your legs.”

Clint laughs. “Okay, you sound like I don't literally climb up the the side of the Tower on a regular basis.” He grabs the two other bags of take-out food. They leave the shop, bickering amongst themselves, and Clint thinks idly about Phil and Tony who are waiting for them at home.

“So, tell me about it,” Clint needles, and nudges his Alpha with his elbow. “And if you say 'a gentleman doesn't kiss and tell', I'm dumping this ramen on your head.”

Steve grins and ducks his head. “I don't know what to say, Clint. It was nice? Because it was.”

“But _details_ ,” Clint says, and they move apart so a stressed woman in a way too thick coat can bustle past and between them. “You're dating my boyfriend, technically, and that means I'm privy to all of the details.”

“All of them?”

“Every single one.”

Steve huffs, but starts talking. He describes what he and Phil ate – at a small, Italian place Clint has been with Phil a few times before – what they talked about, how the mood was. “I think it was good,” Steve finishes thoughtfully. “I had a good time, and I think Phil did too. I hope he did.”

Clint laughs, because he slept over at Phil's that same night and got to see the non-put-together version of Steve's date. Phil had been a wreck after, all nerves and happiness and 'does he like me', like they were all fourteen-year-olds. Clint mocked him endlessly for it and nearly had to sleep on the couch.

Steve looks at him expectantly.

“He had a good time, Steve,” Clint promises. “He's already excited for his date with Tony.”

Steve grins and ducks his head. “You know, I think Tony should take Phil to-” – and then he freezes. 

His face goes slack, his eyes roll back. Then he sways forward and crumples.

Clint barely has time to notice the trickle of blood that starts pouring out of a small, round hole in Steve's chest, and then Clint throws himself to the side. A half-second later, a bullet hits the wall behind him with a large _crack_ and Clint's fingers already circle the tag on his wrist, alerting SHIELD and JARVIS of their emergency and location. There's no time to check on Steve; Clint is up and running as fast as he can, heart hammering in his throat, towards where the shot came from. It's a terrible decision, it'll probably get him killed and he knows he won't get there in time, but he's gonna try anyway.

There's a window with a small, round, pre-made hole in it; fourth floor, the block next to the Thai place where Steve– Clint is not thinking about that. He's climbing up to the apartment from the outside, anything else will take too much time and he might have time, he could-

The room is empty when he climbs into it, lands on his feet and draws his gun. There's no one here, he knows that, but he checks the entire place anyway, as fast as he can. There's no smell here, no lingering scent, which means the assassin is either propped full of suppressants, has self-control like nobody Clint has ever heard of, or has been altered like Tasha has.

He finds a still-assembled sniper rifle and though he doesn't touch it, he knows there aren't going to be any fingerprints. The assassin might not be among the best, seeing as he missed Clint, but he's not gonna be an idiot. Although it takes a special type of idiot to try and take on Captain America.

Clint's head is screaming at him to _go check on his Alpha now, right the fuck now_ , so he starts climbing back out the window. However, something stops him. A niggle of a smell. He sniffs the air, tries to pinpoint where it comes from, and notices a tiny, tiny drop of something on the window frame. Leaning down to check it out, he can smell what it is: oil. A similar kind of motor oil that Tony uses on his Iron Man suits to make the joints move smoothly. The scent lingers on him sometimes, when he comes up from his workshop.

Clint doesn't let himself linger. He jumps out and makes his way down, back across the street to where a crowd is already gathering. “Move. I'm a doctor, move!” he shouts, and the people closest steps back. The doctor lie usually does it.

“An ambulance is coming,” someone supplies helpfully, and Clint just snarls: “I know!”

SHIELD should be here any minute, it's all good. Except it won't be any good if- “Steve. Steve? Hey, Steve, c'mon,” Clint mutters and turns him over. There's a pool of blood on the pavement, soaking into the mess of ramen and food cartons around them, but it's not that big, it's not fatal in volume alone...

Steve's face is pale as death. His eyes are closed. Clint rips his bloodied t-shirt off to see where the bullet hit; there was no exit hole in Steve's back, which means the bullet is still lodged somewhere inside his chest.

His heart is beating. That's the first thing that truly registers in Clint's panic-hazy mind. He's freaking out on the inside but on the outside, his body is calm and collected, going through the motions of past missions. Steve's pulse is erratic, but it's relatively strong. Clint keeps his fingers on Steve's throat, feels the reassuring beats, and tries to assess the damage. The bullet entered Steve's body between his second and third rib, not even an inch from his heart. But it was at an angle, which means that the lung-

The pulse beneath Clint's fingers starts to stutter. “No, no,” Clint mutters, “c'mon, Cap, you're a goddamn supersoldier, shrug this off.”

Steve's pulse stop-starts, stop-starts, and then it's gone.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Clint grits out and starts chest compressions. Steve's wound bleeds sluggishly, but Clint can deal with that; it's worse when he starts mouth-to-mouth and bloods starts bubbling out of Steve's mouth. Busted lung.

The howl of an ambulance approaches fast, and Clint keeps up the CPR because Steve isn't dead yet, even if he's technically a little dead. He's bounced back from worse. It's fine. It's fine.

It's fine.

“Come the fuck on, Steve,” Clint says and does not whimper _even a little bit_ , because he's a fucking professional and trying to save a life here.

Then the paramedics are there and Clint steps away, lets them get Steve on the gurney, lets them do their job.

“Barton, talk to me,” Agent Hill says, striding over to him. They both get into the ambulance and strap in.

“Merc nest across the street; you need someone on it before it can get scrubbed,” Clint says. Hill nods and rattles off the information into her ear piece, before gesturing for him to continue. Clint tells her everything that happened, quick and clear, and tries to ignore how the paramedics are shouting at each other. There's a steady beep-screeching that tells him that Steve is still in cardiac arrest, and he can't _focus on that right now_.

“Stark and Coulson are coming,” Hill says in what is a pretty comforting manner, for her. “They'll meet us at HQ.”

“What about Romanoff?” Clint says, giving in to the niggle in the back of his brain that's been focusing on the hitman. “She needs to take a look at the nest.”

Hill frowns. “Tell me your thoughts, Special-Agent.”

“Just- there was a small spill, ma'am. Motor oil, not sure which brand. By the gun.” Clint forces himself to sit still. “Can't help but think that's important somehow.”

“It could be for the gun,” Hill says, but she doesn't sound like she believes that; more like she's challenging him to dig deeper.

“No, ma'am, smelled all wrong. It's for metal joints; Stark uses a similar brand for his suits. I recognize the smell.”

“Motor oil for metal joints?” Hill's eyebrows climb a fraction higher and wow, that is a bad sign. “Noted, Special Agent.”

“Yeah,” Clint says and rubs at his face. “Ask Romanoff about it.” He wants Natasha here. He wants – he wants Tony, and Phil, and he wants Steve to sit up and wave off their worry, say he's been through worse before, maybe tell a story from the war.

“We're losing him, guys, come on,” the head paramedic barks, and Clint hides his face in his hands.

~*~

As soon as the gurney speeds through the hospital corridors and into the already-prepped surgery room, Clint stops to lean against a wall. Out in the field, he _has_ to keep his cool, because he's still – somehow – on the job then. Here, in the hospital? He's not Agent Barton. He's just Clint. And Clint is freaking the fuck out because his Alpha is dead.

“Clint.” Phil is there, so sudden it's like he materialized out of thin air. “Talk to me.” It's a relief to hear how calm Phil is, because that means that Clint doesn't have to be.

He rattles off the basics of the situation, but instead of stopping there, he continues with: “- and he was so pleased with your date, Phil, he wanted Tony to take you to a place but he never got to say where-”

“Clint,” Phil says and steps forward, into his space. “Tony will be here in less than a minute. Steve will be fine.” He wraps his arms around Clint, and Clint can feel how he trembles, just barely.

“Not supposed to use first names,” Clint mumbles into the smooth fabric of Phil's shirt, and only realizes how hard he's clinging to Phil when the Beta makes a small sound of discomfort. “'s not your office.”

“To hell with that for now,” Phil says, calm but with an undercurrent of something dangerous in his voice.

Clint breathes into his neck and stays right where he is, the bustling noises of the hospital around him ignored, until a familiar cluster of smells hits him. Peanut buttered popcorn, just how the circus made it; dry, fresh hay, the best things to sleep on when Clint was on camel-watching duty; the light, crumbly wood smell of his first bow.

“Tony,” he says, whimpers even, and turns around so he can barrel into his other Alpha. “ _Fuck_.”

Strong arms envelop him, and Phil stays right where he is, at Clint's back, watching over them both.

“How is he?” Tony says. His goatee scratches against Clint's temple, and Tony's body is trembling finely, just like Phil's was.

“Dunno,” Clint says, which is true. “He kept flat-lining in the ambulance, and the bullet's still lodged-”

“Where was he hit?”

“Lung, inch from his heart. Bastard who took the shot missed,” Clint snarls. He breathes in as much of Tony's scent as he can, craves it even though it stinks of anxiety and worry. It lets Clint calm down; reminds him that he's not on his own here. Slowly, his head clears, until he can pull back and look his Alpha in the eye. “C'mon, let's see how surgery's going.”

Normally, Phil would stop them at this point, but now he only nods and leads the way. Tony wraps his hand around Clint's and they hurry to a small room next to where the surgery's being held, the wall between them replaced by a giant window to allow for an audience.

Steve is intubated, and while one of the tubes is clearly there to transport oxygen into his lungs, there's a second tube filled with blood. There is calm chaos in the operating room; ten, twelve things are going on at any time and there's two surgeons, four nurses in there, but everything happens fast and clean like everyone is absolutely clear on what their parts are. It's a little like watching a ballet, each dancer working flawlessly beside all the others, and Clint would probably appreciate it more if the person on the operating table wasn't Steve.

He's mostly hidden by a blue sheet, but there's enough blood that Clint is faintly nauseous. The woman that looks to be the lead surgeon is currently rooting around in Steve's chest with something, and Clint knows really well that this is a lot more fine-tuned than it looks like, but it still looks brutal. The heart-rate machine is going haywire in the background, and next to him, Tony is just whispering “fuck, fuck, fuck” to himself over and over again.

Clint forgot his phone... somewhere. In the Tower, maybe. “Phil, can I borrow your phone?” he says, and sounds numb to his own ears.

Phil hands it to him without hesitation.

“Nat,” Clint says as soon as she picks up.

“I'm here,” she says. “I think I know who the sniper is, but I can't be sure yet. Tell me how Steve's doing.”

“Still in surgery,” Clint says, forehead pressed against the glass. “He keeps – he keeps flat-lining, but he hasn't given up.”

“And he won't,” she says, voice hard. There's a quiet rustle on the line, and Clint knows she's moving. “I'm going after him, Clint.”

Clint closes his eyes. He doesn't understand how Natasha can make him so relieved and so worried at the same time. “Without back-up? Not a chance, Nat.”

She hums into the phone.

“Nat?”

“He made a mistake,” she says. “You saw the apartment – this is a professional, so how did he miss?”

It's the same thing Clint has been wondering about for the past twenty minutes – at least the part of him that's not focusing on Steve. He knows Natasha's voices, though. “Tell me.”

“I can't be sure,” she says and sounds annoyed by it. “I'll get back to you.”

“Nat,” he says. “ _Don't_ go after him alone.”

“I'll call you when it's safe.”

“Nat!” he barks, but she's gone. He knows it's no use, but he still tries to call her back. It goes to voicemail. “ _Fuck_.”

“What's going on, Clint?” Tony asks to his left.

“Nat's going after the sniper,” Clint whispers. On the other side of the glass, the head surgeon removes the bullet from Steve's body and drops it in a small metal bowl a nurse is holding.

“Clint,” Phil says warningly and takes back his phone.

“I didn't do anything!” Clint snaps. “You know her!”

“I have to go deal with this,” Phil says, but he squeezes Clint's arm reassuringly before he goes.

Tony moves closer to Clint in Phil's absence, and that's when Clint notices how badly Tony's shaking. “Hey,” he says and looks – actually looks – at his Alpha. “Tony.”

“It's fine, I'm cool,” Tony says, twice as fast as usual. He shifts his weight from one leg to the other, drums his fingers against his sides, and his eyes look almost wild. He's got the ramrod-straight and twitchy quality of a bow that's gone too long without being unstrung.

Sometimes, a calming influence keeps Clint from freaking out. Sometimes, strangely enough, the opposite does just the same.

Clint moves behind Tony. He slides his arms around Tony's waist, hooks his chin over Tony's shoulders, and feels the hammering of Tony's heart even through two layers of t-shirts. His Alpha is shaking so hard Clint's chin actually hurts from standing like he is.

Tony kicks at the wall.

“He'll get through it,” Clint says quietly. He knows they're both watching the EKG in the operation room; the irregular spikes signal early stages of tachycardia. It's bad, it's really bad, but if Steve died in the ambulance and got through that, he'll get through this too. Right?

“I can't,” Tony says in a strangled voice. He shrugs off Clint's touches and mumbles something like 'too light'. There's a buzzing under his skin that Clint recognizes; it's an old urge, one he rarely has anymore, one that would make him go out and pick a fight in a bar, any bar, and let himself lose just because it felt _so good_ to exchange the emotional pain with physical pain for once.

So he envelops Tony in his arms again. But this time, it's not a caress. This time it's too hard, too tight, uncomfortable – and when Tony tries to shrug him off, Clint doesn't let him. Tony strains against him, not quite fighting him but something close to it, and Clint squeezes harder and harder until Tony's panting. Clint's arms can be a vice when he wants them to be.

“That's it,” he whispers as Tony tries half-heartedly to break away. Tony doesn't say anything, doesn't tell him to stop or let him go. The head surgeon is stitching Steve's wound shut, and when the nurses start the familiar finishing-up-procedure, Tony stops fighting and slumps back against Clint.

“Why are you being the grownup right now?” Tony asks and sounds lost in himself.

“Because Steve's out of commission,” Clint says and buries his face in Tony's hair.

~*~

By the time Phil returns, Steve has been wheeled into his own post-op room, and Clint and Tony are with him there. They sit on either side of Steve's bed, clutching his hands, careful not to jostle any tubes.

“He's not dead,” Clint says before Phil can say anything. “Well. Not right _now_ he's not.”

“That's not funny yet,” Tony says and his voice is rough as sandpaper.

“Sorry,” Clint mumbles, with a glance at his boyfriend, and stretches his hand out towards Phil. Phil grabs it, silent.

“It's okay,” Tony says. “Inappropriate humor as a coping mechanism, that used to be my jam.” His smile is brittle, but at least it's there. He pats Steve's hand awkwardly. “I don't know why it's not anymore.”

“Maybe you grew up,” Clint says, which is a joke, but Tony doesn't contradict him.

“You're both dealing with this better than you would a year ago,” Phil says and squeezes Clint's hand. There are no more chairs in the room, so Phil just stands by Clint's side.

“You've got a fair point, Agent,” Tony says. “Can you tell us what's up with Romanoff?”

Phil sighs. “She has gone dark.”

“Fuck,” Clint mutters. He should never have asked her to go over there; he's _still_ not sure who they're hunting, but it's clear that Natasha knows – or at least, she's got a strong hunch, and Nat's hunches are never wrong – and that means it's someone who's been in the game for a long while. “Do you want me to go after her?” he asks.

Phil shakes his head. “Your focus is here right now, as it should be. I'm giving her twenty-four hours to check in – if she doesn't, I'm sending another agent in.” Nobody says it, but it's clear that Clint is that other agent – there's no one else, except Phil, Maria, and Fury, that can keep up with Natasha on the hunt or on the run. That's how Clint got her to SHIELD in the first place, after all.

“I have to go,” Phil says after a few minutes of silence. “I've got a meeting with the Director about this development, but I will be back later.” He leans past Clint, fingers brushing over Steve's knuckles once, like a greeting, before he pulls back and straightens his tie.

Clint tilts his head up and purses his lips, which isn't subtle, but gets the message across. Phil dutifully leans down and gives him a light kiss, before he smiles, nods at Tony, and leaves them. It's just – just something Clint needed right now, but it's also pretty much the first time he and Phil have kissed in front of his Alphas.

“Was that... cool?” Clint asks.

“Hm?” Tony jerks out of a musing of some kind, and glances at the closed door. “What, the makeouts? Of course. It's kinda weird, seeing Agent like that, but not in a bad way.” He quirks a small smile at Clint, who returns it.

They sit in silence, staring at their Alpha, while the sun slowly passes by their window and goes down.

Clint is dozing in his seat, Tony fiddling with his StarkTablet, when Steve twitches. Clint startles awake, and they both grab Steve's hands again.

“Steve?” Tony says. “Heeey, Capsicle.”

Steve groans very, very quietly. His eyes flutter.

Clint brings Steve's hand up to his mouth and kisses the back of it, where the IV line is attached.

Slowly, Steve's eyes open a fraction and his gaze flickers around the room. The EKG he's still attached to starts beeping quicker, telling them that Steve's heartbeat is picking up more speed than it should. Steve is freaking out and Clint doesn't know why – they're both here, surely Steve can see and smell that?

“Hey, it's fine, Steve,” Clint says and brushes a hand through Steve's sweaty, slightly-greasy hair. “It's okay, everyone's okay. Calm down.”

Steve opens his mouth, but only a rasp comes out. He still looks scared, and Clint doesn't know how to fix it.

“Oh, crap,” Tony says and jerks forward in his chair, the way he does every time he realizes something important a little later than he should. “Cap? Hey, Steve. It's July fifth, it's twenty-fourteen, and you've only been under for a few hours. Okay?”

Steve stares at Tony like he's his only anchor, and makes a raspy, questioning noise.

“Yeah, you were pretty bad off, but you haven't been in a coma or anything,” Tony says reassuringly. “You passed out and slept through surgery, which was-” he glances at the clock on his tablet, “-five hours ago. That's it, you didn't lose any more time than that.”

The heart monitor stops freaking out when Steve does, and he manages to weakly squeeze Clint and Tony's hands.

“Go back to sleep,” Clint says and presses his nose to his Alpha's temple. “We're right here.” Steve smells like sickness and panic.

Steve's eyes slide closed and his breathing evens out.

“How did you know?” Clint murmurs to Tony; he doesn't want to wake Steve. “It didn't even cross my mind.”

Tony shrugs. “Just an old conversation, before we got together. Steve mentioned that he had nightmares, sometimes, that he'd wake up and he's be a hundred years into the future.”

Clint puffs out a breath. “That must be such a mind-fuck, getting defrosted.” It's not something they talk about, just like they rarely talk about their own fucked-up childhoods; it's not exactly dinner party conversation. But it's something that quietly keeps on fascinating and impressing Clint, how well-adjusted Steve is to the new millennium. He wonders, in the privacy of his own mind, whether Steve's serum has helped him with that, or if he's just adjusted so quickly because he's had to.

It's so hard to remember that if you take away all the years Steve spent in the ice, he's barely twenty-six. He's so _young_ , at least compared to Clint and Tony – and Phil. And yet, he's the most mature and emotionally adjusted of all of them. 

Clint gets out of his chair, and his neck and back twinge painfully, so he stretches. “I'm heading to the cafeteria,” he says to Tony. “Want something?”

Tony grimaces. “No. I should, though.”

“I'll see if they have some kind of disgusting smoothie,” Clint offers.

Tony huffs a laugh. “Just bring me something that isn't covered in grease.”

“Yes, dear.” He goes around the bed to steal a kiss from his Alpha before he leaves.

~*~


	2. Chapter 2

“Are you okay?” is the first thing Steve says a few hours later, the next time he wakes up. It's aimed at Clint, and Steve looks heartbreakingly worried.

“You're a fucking idiot,” Clint says in reply to that, and kisses Steve's forehead. “But yeah, I'm fine. Your taking a bullet to the chest gave me this vague idea that someone might take a shot at me, so I dodged it.”

“You must be psychic,” Tony says and walks around the bed, to Clint's side, so Steve doesn't have to turn his head to see both of them.

“Goddamn right,” Clint says easily and plasters himself against Tony's side, since he can't do that to Steve without potentially hurting him.

“I'm glad you're okay,” Steve says, so earnest it hurts. His breathing is laborious, his lung still healing. He gives Clint's hand a gentle squeeze, where it's still dwarfed by Steve's own. “Good thing the sniper targeted me.”

“Oh yeah,” Clint snaps, “that's what me and Tony's been doing here for the last nine hours. _Celebrating_.”

“No, that's not what I mean, Clint,” Steve says, frowning. He tries to sit up a little, and hitches a breath when it must pull on his still-healing chest wound. He takes a few shallow breaths, eyes squeezed shut.

“What I think Capsicle is trying to say,” Tony says, “is that one person in this room has super healing, and the others don't. Some of us wouldn't bounce back from that bullet.” He looks pinched when he says it, and he's got an almost possessive hand on the small of Clint's back.

“Thanks, Tony,” Steve says and touches the gauze on his chest gingerly. He flinches, beads of sweat forming on his forehead. “Do we know who the sniper is yet?”

They shake their heads, and Tony brushes his hand over Steve's sweaty brow.

“He got away,” Clint mutters, “I couldn't- he was too fast.”

Steve opens his eyes. “You went after him?” He's not quite angry, but he's got a Tone.

“Of course I fucking did,” Clint snaps. “I'm kind of a SHIELD agent, Steve, don't know if you've noticed but that's pretty much my _fucking job._ ”

“Whoa, hey, hostility,” Tony says. “Maybe we should-”

“Without back-up or any intel?” Steve fires back weakly, but with that old Captain America fire in his eyes and his jaw clenched. “That's ridiculous, Clint, you know you're-”

“-supposed to give him five, ten minutes to leisurely pack up his shit and get away?” Clint says, pushing Tony away and clenching his fists. “Yeah, how about _fuck that_ , Rogers. Backup or no, I'm not a civilian-”

“-could have gotten yourself killed-” Steve argues between shallow breaths that try to be deep.

“-you don't _get_ it!” Clint shouts. “This guy fucking _shot my Alpha_ , of course I was going after him! If Nat wasn't hunting him down right now, that's what I'd be out there doing!” He might be shaking, just a little.

Steve looks ashen, but at least he's calmed down. “Clint,” he says, softly.

“He shot you, Steve,” Clint say, so pointed he can taste blood. “I will _fucking destroy_ him. Do you get that?”

Steve sighs in exasperation, though his eyes are impossibly fond.

“Sir, yes sir,” Tony says from his side. He looks torn between admiration and wariness.

“Good,” Clint says. He makes sure his tone leaves no room for argument. He does, however, draw Tony back close with a hand fisted in his shirt. Once they're close enough, Clint noses at Tony's jaw – not quite in apology, but something like it.

“Damn, Barton, you've got a scary side,” Tony mutters, but he relaxes and kisses Clint's temple. “Where'd you hide that?”

“It doesn't apply to very many people,” Clint says and grabs Steve's hand again.

“Something the collective bad guys of the world should be grateful for, I'm thinking,” Steve says with a wry smile.

~*~

After the twelve-hour mark, and another bout of sleep for all of them, it starts to become apparent how effective Steve's serum is. He can sit up, just about, and talk with them almost like a normal person. He's no longer connected to any of the most precarious machines in the room, he's starting to get a little color back, and they're all relaxing from it. It will be a little while before he can leave the hospital, but if there was ever a chance he wouldn't make it, Clint knows it has well and truly passed by now.

Bruce, Thor, and various other friends came by before breakfast to make sure that they were all alright. Bruce looked pinched at how tired they all were, but didn't say anything. He just hugged all three of them before he started a conversation about something completely different, and Thor kept petting Steve's hair as if he were afraid to touch him anywhere else.

They're currently feeding Steve Jell-o. It's hilarious how uncomfortable Steve is with eating something _that_ green; Clint and Tony end up feeding each other most of the delicious-but-artificial-as-hell dessert instead.

And Clint hasn't given this any conscious thought, and he _damn sure_ isn't planning to say anything about it now or soon or _ever_ , but when he opens his mouth to say something about Steve's grumpy-old-man face, what comes out is: “I wanna go off my contraceptives.”

Steve and Tony look the exact same amount of shell-shocked. Tony puts down the Jell-o and takes the eating tray away. Neither of them say anything.

“I know, I know,” Clint says and presses his palms against his eyes, wondering what the hell his sense of timing is. “It's not a good time, it'll never _be_ a good time; we're Avengers, we're too high-profile, there's too much danger and too many unknown variables and for fuck's sake, you just _died_ , Steve.” He makes himself look at them. Tony is gripping the tray with white-knuckled fingers and is staring at the floor; Steve stares at Clint with a look that is so open and sad and hopeful that Clint just can't meet it. It hurts too much, to be the source of that hope.

“But-” he says haltingly, but there's no way back now. “I want to have a kid with you guys. I do.” He swallows and revels in just how true that actually is. He hasn't thought about it, hasn't _let_ himself, because even with their last scare – maybe particularly _because_ of that – it had highlighted just how bad of an idea it would be. But Clint can't forget Steve's face when he told them about his daydream; he can't stop his own dreams, waking up drenched in sweat, palms pressed against his flat stomach, thinking _where'd she go, where is she_. Clint _wants_.

“Clint,” Steve says weakly, “you saw how easy it was for a sniper to almost take two of us down. It's too dangerous.”

“I _know_ ,” Clint says harshly, which is unfair because none of this is Steve's fault. And Steve looks upset; he _smells_ upset and that's Clint's fault, because he's a shitty Omega. “But, Steve.” He takes Steve's hand. “Seeing you like that, being there, knowing you _died_ , even for a minute... Once I could think straight, I just couldn't ignore the fact that if you'd stayed dead, there would be... nothing left of you. Nothing tangible, not really.” He's gripping Steve's hand too hard, but Steve doesn't pull away.

Tony looks the same kind of pinched that Clint feels, but he's not saying anything. Not yet, at least. He puts the tray down, though, and smooths his hands down his shirt; a nervous habit he shares with Phil.

“I love you,” Clint says, “both of you. I want – I wanna know that even if you die, hell, even if all three of us bite it, there'll be something left, y'know? Something that's just ours. Something we made. And-” he bites down on that last confession, but he's dug himself this far down, hasn't he? “And... I wanna be a mom,” he finishes quietly.

Tony makes a very, very small noise.

“Clint,” Steve says, “we shouldn't. Not the way things are right now.” He doesn't let go of Clint's hand, not even when Clint flinches and tries to pull it back. “ _However_ ,” Steve says loudly, his eyes begging Clint to hear him out, “and this is important – that doesn't mean that I don't want to. Because I do, okay? There's nothing I want more than having a kid with the both of you.”

Tony sways a little where he stands, away from the others, clutching the lapels of his shirt like they're the only things keeping him upright.

“I just think we need to take some time to figure out all the rest,” Steve says, “all the technicalities of it. This can't be something we rush into.”

Clint's stomach has taken an impromptu ride on a roller coaster for the last few minutes, but finally, it's settling down – and so is his heartbeat. “Yeah,” he says, “you're right,” because Steve _is_. This isn't something that'll change their weekend – it's something that will change their lives forever. They can't rush into that.

“At least, that's my stance,” Steve finishes awkwardly. “Tony?”

“No,” Tony says, and it feels like a knife slides between Clint's ribs and settles there. “I can't- we can't- I killed my goldfish!” Tony sputters. His face is _white_.

“What?” Steve says.

“You guys are the only things in my life, save for Rhodey, though God knows how I managed that, that I haven't broken,” Tony says. “We can't- I can't do that to a kid, that's cruel.”

And it breaks Clint's heart a little, it does, but something about it also makes Clint giggle helplessly because man, they are a pair.

“What?” Tony says, hunched defensively. “I'm serious!”

Clint crosses the distance and pushes Tony forward, so he all but falls on top of Steve's legs. Steve, bright and quick-minded as always, grabs a hold of Tony's arms and hoists him fully onto the bed, next to him. It's a tight fit, but Clint stays by the side of the bed to make sure Tony doesn't fall out.

“Hey! That is- some kind of kidnapping!” Tony says, but doesn't actually try to remove himself from Steve's side. Instead, he lays his head down beside Steve's shoulder, and puts a hand gently across Steve's stomach. “Kidnappers,” he mutters.

“Yes, dear,” Clint says.

“Tony, need we remind you that you've been a parent for most of your life?” Steve says in a patient tone.

“What are you talking about, Capsicle? Did you hit your head on the way down?” Tony says.

“Nah, he's right,” Clint says and leans down to nose at Tony's sweaty hair. They all need a shower. “Or are we incorrect to assume,” he says in a deliberately pompous voice, “that you in fact tend to call your robots your 'kids'?”

Tony pauses at that. “That's different,” he says.

“Of course it is,” Steve says. “But Dum-E, U and JARVIS are still excellent examples that you can create another being, take responsibility for it, teach it everything it needs to become its own person, care about it, _love_ it, for years and years.”

Tony doesn't respond to that. Probably, Clint thinks, because disagreeing with Steve would make Tony either say that he doesn't take care of his bots – which he does, diligently – or that they're not real people – which, to him and the rest of the team, they absolutely are.

“We have to give this some careful thought,” Steve continues, “because we're, well, the people we are. But I have no doubts that we'll all be great parents, Tony.”

Tony mutters something that sounds suspiciously like 'star-spangled man with a plan'. Steve chuckles. His scent is changing, becoming more pronounced and happy, so Clint can smell the intermingling scents that make Steve his Alpha. The raspberry scented incense his favourite circus person, the bearded lady, always had in her tent. Her husband's homemade gumbo, so strong it would make Clint's eyes water when he sniffed the pot. The pine-scented soap he'd used to scrub down his first apartment, the first place in his entire life that had been Clint's and nobody else's.

“Plus,” Clint points out dryly, “you're not the one that'll be looking like a balloon.”

It's a joke, but Tony's eyes widens a fraction and he turns his head to look at Clint. Both his and Steve's scents change, anticipation mixed with what must be sudden arousal, and Clint swallows hard.

“That wasn't meant to be a come-on,” he says, his voice a little shaky, “but thanks for the vote of confidence?”

“God,” Steve says and stretches his hand out to press the palm lightly against Clint's stomach. He doesn't say anything else, just keeps his hand there, both he and Tony staring at how it frames most of Clint's abdomen. Steve has really big hands, Clint thinks.

“Sooo,” Clint says eventually. “Did I just tap into some Alpha instinct thing? Because you're both wearing the same googly-eyes.”

Steve and Tony both jerk out whatever fantasy they'd been caught in, look at each other sheepishly, and Steve grabs Clint's hand to kiss it. “Alpha thing,” he agrees, then coughs.

“So,” Tony says once silence has settled and become comfortable, “are we- actually doing this? Not just talk?”

“I want to,” Clint says and looks at Steve, his stomach squirming in a pleasant way. Steve nods, looking flushed and healthier than he should, considering he's still in a hospital bed. He's got Tony wrapped around him, though; that probably helps.

“Yes,” Steve says on an exhale. “Yeah, I think we are. Although there are some- things we need to figure out first.”

Clint and Tony nods. “Dibs on telling Agent,” Tony says. “Someone else tell Fury, I don't need his frowny-face clouding my day.”

Clint chuckles, and ignores the little surge of thrill that goes through him at the thought of Phil. Or even more, Tony telling Phil that they're trying.

They're actually trying.

“I'll be right back,” Clint murmurs and kisses both his Alphas. “Gotta use the head.” He walks out of the room with considerably more bounce in his steps than he should, with only a few hours sleep on him, and locks himself in the tiny bathroom right next to Steve's room. He takes out his wallet and finds the little plastic pouch with his emergency stash. Picks up the small, white contraception pills one by one, and drops them in the toilet. They make a small, satisfying _plonk_ against the ceramic and Clint grins to himself, feeling calm and buzzed, like he's drunk. 

He doesn't stop until they're all gone, and then he flushes them down.

~*~

Phil has been coming by every twelve hours or so, mostly to give them an update on Natasha, and this time is no exception. She seems to check in around the eighteen-hour mark, which means Clint can stay here for now. Phil doesn't give them any details, but they all realise quickly that she's somewhere in Europe.

“Do we know who it is yet?” Tony asks.

Phil looks slightly pinched. “It hasn't been confirmed yet, but we have a good guess.”

“That bad?” Clint says, because he knows all of Phil's faces and that one means nothing good.

Phil just looks at him for a moment, before he asks how Steve is doing.

“Healing up nice and easy, sir,” Steve says and smiles. He's sitting upright in his bed now, eating without help. (He still won't touch the Jell-o, though.) “Docs say I should be out of here by tomorrow, since I can do most of the physical therapy at home.”

Clint doesn't miss how Tony's eyes soften a fraction at Steve's calling the Tower 'home'.

“And don't think I didn't notice you changing the subject, sir,” Steve adds with a wry smile aimed at Phil. “Unless it's classified, I think we'd all like to know.”

Phil sighs and leans back against the wall, letting some of his Phil-ness slip through his Agent Coulson mask.

“Phil?” Clint asks, more to see if that's cool or not right now. Phil has very particular rules on the use of first name and last name; of colloquialism in the workplace. Then again, it's only the four of them here, and Phil can't have gotten much sleep in the last day and a half, judging by the deep, crinkled bags beneath his eyes. Clint wants to inch closer, wrap himself around Phil and mess up his wispy hair a little – if he's allowed to.

“Clint,” Phil acknowledges with a small smile.

That's as much of a permission Clint needs; he slips out of his chair and traipses over to Phil, insinuating himself into Phil's personal space the way he knows he's earned. Tony and Steve watch him, with fondness where Clint used to think there'd be condemnation or jealousy, and Clint slides his hands under Phil's shirt jacket until he can feel how human he is.

Phil sighs again, but it's a content noise this time, not a tired one. He nuzzles Clint's temple in thanks, eyes fluttering shut, and leans forward until they're both holding each other up.

“When's the last time you slept, Phil?” Steve asks, not even trying to mask the concern in his voice.

“Only nineteen hours ago,” Phil says against Clint's hair. Clint grumbles something rude into the soft material of his white shirt, and Phil chuckles. “It's by my own choice, no need to get protective on my behalf.”

“Tomorrow morning,” Tony says, “you're coming home with us. Deal?” He lounges in a chair by Steve's side, arms crossed on his stomach, eyes tired but clear.

Phil watches him for a minute, checks his watch, and then nods. “That sounds fair.”

Clint makes a general sound of happiness, because 'with us' sounds a lot like _with us_ and that, that would be really great. Sleeping – and Clint means that in the strictest sense of the word – with Phil, Steve and Tony all together is on his secret list of fantasies.

“I should go,” Phil says, and sounds like he regrets having to say it. “Particularly if I'm going home in seven hours, I need to brief the others on what we know so far.” He kisses Clint's cheek chastely, and Clint takes that as the hint it is to pull away.

“You still didn't tell us,” Tony says when Phil moves to leave. “Who the sniper is.”

“Right,” Phil says and grimaces. “Must be more tired than I thought, I apologize.” He glances at Clint. “There isn't much to tell. But anyone of Natasha's acquaintance...”

“Is a bad thing,” Clint says.

Phil looks almost old. “Very bad indeed.”

~*~

By the time they're good to go, and Steve is sitting – sulking, really – in the wheelchair the hospital makes him leave in, Phil still hasn't been by.

“I'll get him, you guys go ahead,” Clint says, and instead of arguing, Tony just nods and starts pushing Steve forward. Steve looks like he wants to make a bigger fuss, but he also looks a little gray from the effort it had taken to get from the bed to the chair, so he keeps quiet. HIs breathing is wheezy and uncomfortably loud in the small room.

“I can't leave now, Barton, there's too much work to do,” Phil says once Clint knocks on his door and walks in.

“Nice try, sir,” he says. “Is there anything that can't wait eight hours?”

Phil gestures at a stack of maybe ten files on his desk, next to a _much_ larger stack of files that presumably aren't that time-sensitive.

__“How many of those require a level higher than five?” Clint asks._ _

__“None,” Phil says and frowns at him._ _

__“Miss Lewis can take care of them, sir,” Clint says with a grin. Darcy Lewis, apparently one of Jane's colleagues, started working here right after Thor first touched down on Earth. She's not Phil's secretary or assistant, but the two of them seem to have some kind of buddy-system, so among SHIELD personnel, she's known as Phil's unofficial right-hand woman._ _

__“I don't think-” Phil starts._ _

__“Sir,” Clint cuts him off sharply, “with all due respect, you look like hell. I'm sure Director Fury would disapprove of your working yourself into the ground because of one mishap.” Clint walks up to the desk and leans forward, so he can lower his voice. “It's not your fault Steve got shot, sir.”_ _

__Phil rubs a hand over his face. He looks so tired Clint's chest aches with it. “I know, Clint,” Phil says, and that's when Clint knows he'll get Phil home with him. “I'm just – trying to make sure it won't happen again.”_ _

__“Well, you can't,” Clint says. “Superheroing is a rough business, there's always gonna be people who try to take us out. You can try to prevent it as much as you want, Phil, but some day something's gonna slip through.” He shrugs, even though that knowledge sits sour in his stomach. “That's just how it is.”_ _

__Phil sends him a sharp look, before he goes over to close the door to his office._ _

__“Phil?” Clint asks, watching him move, and leans back against Phil's desk._ _

__“What if the sniper had taken out you first?” Phil asks. He leans a hand heavily against the closed door. “Clearly he considered Steve the bigger threat and tried to kill him first. What if he had made a different call?”_ _

__Clint doesn't need to think very hard on that. “Then I'd be dead,” he says, and amends with: “Probably.”_ _

__Phil nods. “And that's why I can't stop working yet.”_ _

__“Phil- are you freaking out because of _me_?” Clint says, baffled. He loves Phil, and he knows Phil cares a whole lot about Clint too, but it would've been _so much_ worse if Steve had died. Fuck's sake, they would've lost Captain America _and_ Steve Rogers, all in the same person._ _

__“Yes.” Phil sighs and leans back against his door. “That is what I'm doing.”_ _

__Clint shakes his head and comes over. “Hugging okay?” he asks, because this is still Phil's work space._ _

__Phil doesn't reply, but he draws Clint into a hug that's harder and tighter than usual. He's trembling, just barely, and even his subtle scent stinks of worry._ _

__“Hey, hey,” Clint murmurs and holds on tight, smooths his hands up and down Phil's back. “Jeez, Phil, should've told me you were freaking out this badly.”_ _

__“It wasn't important,” Phil says and tucks his face into the crook of Clint's neck._ _

__“You're important.” Clint kisses Phil's temple and stays where he is, breathing in time with his boyfriend, until some of the tension seeps out of them both. “You're coming home with me now,” Clint says, quiet but resolute. “And I'm gonna introduce you to the joy of getting cuddled by Steve Rogers and Tony Stark.”_ _

__Phil laughs a little and pulls away, eyes guarded but smile genuine. “Well, when you put it like that,” he says. “Just let me call Miss Lewis first.”_ _

____

~*~

“Welcome home, Agents Coulson, Barton,” JARVIS greets them in the elevator.

“Good to be back home, J,” Clint says and grins at the ceiling.

“Quite,” JARVIS says, in what seems to be his version of fond sarcasm. The elevator runs so smoothly the soft 'ding' comes as a surprise when the doors open. “Sir and Captain Rogers are waiting in the bedroom.”

Clint kicks off his shoes and shrugs out of his jacket without bothering to catch it; it drops to the floor to be dealt with later. He knows he's getting the stink-eye from Phil, but just says “ _Tomorrow_ , Phil,” without looking. “Sleep now.”

Phil doesn't argue, but he does hang his own suit jacket over the back of a chair before he pads after Clint towards the bedroom. He smells uncertain, which Clint actually finds adorable – any time he gets to see Phil nervous for a nice reason is a treat – so he grabs Phil's hand and squeezes it.

“Don't worry, Phil,” he says with a shit-eating grin, “I won't let anyone mess with my boyfriend.”

Phil's tired eyes twinkle with amusement. “So I'm your boyfriend now?”

“Unless you prefer another word? Yeah, you are. I feel like 'lover' would be misleading,” Clint says as they pass the living room. The apartment is quiet around them. All the lights are on, but that doesn't really say much these days, since JARVIS can turn them off and on at will.

“Why not just 'friend'?” Phil asks, but it just sounds like he's curious, not disapproving.

“That'd be misleading too,” Clint says and stops to look at him. “Wouldn't it? I don't really kiss my friends, or sleep with them, sex or no.”

“You do so with Natasha occasionally,” Phil points out.

“That's different.”

That only makes Phil look more curious. “How so?”

“Tasha's my sister,” Clint says, and tries to word the different categories of people in his head. “Or something... close to it. You're my boyfriend. Steve and Tony are also my boyfriends, but they're my Alphas as well.”

“Is that how you keep track of the different relationships in your life?” Phil says with a smile, and rubs his thumb over Clint's temple, like he's trying to peek into Clint's brain.

“Sure?” Clint says and grimaces. “I dunno, Phil, why're you asking complicated questions? I don't think a lot about this stuff, it just _works_.” He falters at that, at all the questions. “It... _is_ working, right?” Because if it's not, if Phil's disappointed, then that's bad and Clint should-

Phil steps forward and kisses him. “Yes. I didn't mean to make you question the good things in your life, I'm just curious as to how you think about them. And how I fit into it all.” He tugs gently at Clint's wrist. “Now, I believe you were going to introduce me to something in particular?”

“Right!” They make their way to the bedroom. Clint knocks, just in case, before they enter, but both Tony and Steve are wearing pajamas. They're sitting on the bed, Steve propped up by a dozen pillows, and Tony curled up next to him.

“You're late,” Tony says.

“Blame him,” Clint says and points at Phil, before he pops into the adjoining bathroom to change. He does so quickly, and already has a small pill in his hand before he stops to think about his nightly ritual.

Right. The contraceptives.

Clint takes the whole box and empties it into the toilet, before flushing with a silly look of glee of his face, clearly visibly to himself in the bathroom mirror. He hums to himself while he brushes his teeth, and is still smiling when he heads back into the bedroom.

“What are you so cheerful about?” Tony says, eyes narrowed.

“Cuddles,” Clint says, which isn't really a lie. He wants to fling himself on the bed – it has an awesome bounce – but he's mindful of Steve's still-healing injuries and slips in on the side instead.

Phil has gone to the bathroom, and there's a half-expectant, half-awkward silence in his absence. Clint keeps twitching where he sits, on the middle of the bed; Tony's pacing the room, humming under his breath; and Steve is watching the two of them with a half-smile.

“So!” Tony says the moment Phil comes back, “where'd you wanna be in this sandwich? I feel like you should choose, since you're the newcomer and all. Pick your poison.” He waves at the three of them, with slightly too big gestures.

Judging by Phil's amused smile, Tony's not fooling anyone. “Calm, Tony. I'm not leaving now.” He puts a hand on Tony's jittery shoulder. “I don't have any particular preference.”

Clint snorts. “Oh yeah, you do. I know just where you wanna be.” He beckons Phil closer and then arranges him in the middle of the bed, right between Clint and Steve. Phil's cheeks tint.

“Hi, Phil,” Steve says with a grin. “I'm not much fun yet, I'm afraid, not with this thing still healing-” he gestures at his chest, “-but don't be afraid to lean against me. I'm not that breakable.”

“Thank God,” Tony adds, with murmurs of agreement of the two others. “Where'd you want me, guys?”

Clint makes grabby-hand gestures, so Tony chuckles and joins him on the left side. Like this, Clint and Phil are snuggled in the middle, with Tony and Steve framing them. The scent of Alpha is there, like always, but it's muted and happy. Neither Tony nor Steve are worried or in pain right now, and Clint sniffs the air for extra reassurance.

“All is well,” Phil murmurs and lies down, back against Steve's side so he's facing Clint.

“Know,” Clint says and bumps their noses together. Tony slings his arm across Clint's hip and Clint grabs that hand, holds onto it.

“Phil?” Steve asks. “Can I- touch you? I don't- I don't mean it like that, I just-” Steve's blushing, blushing badly and stammering, which is both encouraging in terms of his general health and endearing as all hell.

Phil must think so too, because he laughs, a quiet, pleased thing. “Yes, Steve, you can touch me. Within limitations.” He winks at Steve and extends a hand. When Steve grabs it, their fingers intertwine. Like this, feeling Phil's presence at his front and Tony's at his back, with Steve linked to all of them through each other, Clint can finally let his guard down for the first time since Steve was shot.

Nobody's coming for them now. Nobody's getting to his pack without going through Clint.

“We know, boy, we know,” Tony whispers against his neck, quiet enough that nobody else will hear. Clint hadn't realised that he was growling, very quietly, until he stops.

“Sorry,” he mumbles and tucks his head under Phil's chin.

“It's okay,” Phil says. “Go to sleep now. That goes for all of you.”

“Yes, sir,” they all say, with the same amount of sass. Clint can feel the vibrations of Phil's tired laugh.

He should sleep, he knows that, but for some reason, something feels... unfinished here. Clint lies awake for a few minutes, listening to the sounds of calm breathing around him, before he finds the missing words. “Dunno what I'd do without you guys.”

No one replies, but Clint feels Tony press another kiss against the back of his neck. He feels Phil entwine their legs together. He feels the careful stroke of Steve's thumb across the back of his knuckles.

And then Clint can sleep.

~*~


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings: allusions to past trauma, brainwashing, induced amnesia, maltreatment and abuse - but only implicated, not explicit.

The next day goes by in its usual pace, like the world is pretending that everything is normal for a little while. Phil is back at HQ and they haven't heard anything from Natasha, but Bruce and Thor and Pepper come by, one by one, to hang out and make sure that Steve is okay. Maria comes by in the lunch break and eats in their apartment with Pepper. The two of them talk, and almost seem to ignore Tony and Clint, but there's an enforced normalcy about it that makes Clint calm down. Like they're trying to bring the feeling of the common floor into their apartment, for Steve's benefit. Steve, who sleeps through most of the day, but who rests easier when there are voices and laughter and life nearby.

Clint busies himself with cleaning, since he doesn't want to leave the apartment while he's alone with Steve. Tony leaves for most of the day to take care of a few meetings, to make up for his three-day absence. Clint even makes Steve lunch in bed, something both of them find hilarious in its oddness, and he ends up eating a piece of toast, cross-legged on the bed, while Steve tries to use cutlery without jostling his healing wound. 

“Would you like to nap with me?” Steve asks when he's finished eating, and sounds embarrassed and hopeful about it all at once. They lie down together, Clint careful not to hurt Steve, and curls around him. He dozes rather than sleeps, but it's reassuring to listen to Steve's slow, measured breaths against his hair.

Once Tony comes back, Clint heads down to the range for a couple of hours to reacquaint himself with his bow. He's missed her, even these past couple days, stringing and shooting without even stopping to see if he hits the bullseye each time (he does) is the closest to normal he's felt in four days.

“Agent Barton, Sir wishes to let you know that dinner is served,” JARVIS says.

Clint grins at the ceiling. “Don't tell me he actually cooked, Jay.”

“I believe today's meal consists of Italian pizzas from the local Mama's,” JARVIS answers crisply enough that Clint knows he's amused.

“And thank God for that.” He heads back up, bow in hand, and deposits her in the safe locker in the hallway of their apartment. Everything smells like tomato sauce and garlic bread, and when he enters the living room, both Steve and Tony are curled up in the couch. Steve's wheelchair is positioned against the back wall, answering Clint's unspoken question of whether Steve really feels up to walking much yet.

They eat together in relative silence, Gossip Girl on the television and Steve safe between them. Steve undoubtedly notices that they both hover, but he doesn't call them on it. He even lets Tony feed him a slice, just so they can make out lazily (and carefully) once it's eaten.

Clint's phone rings. It's Phil. “Sir?” he says and leans back against the couch cushions. It's about time for Nat's update.

“Barton,” Phil says, and his tone is bad news alone.

Clint sits up sharply. “What's wrong, sir?” Out of the corner of his eye, he can see both Tony and Steve tensing.

“Romanov hasn't checked in,” Phil says. “It's been nineteen hours now. I'll call you if anything changes, but unless it does, you're shipping out tomorrow 06.00.”

“Yes, sir.” He gets a few more details – last time they heard from Nat, she was holed up outside Prague – before they hang up. Steve looks pinched, like his chest and lung is bothering him, and Tony has that carefully blank look on his face that makes Clint's heart ache.

“When do you have to leave?” Steve asks.

“Tomorrow morning, unless Nat gets in touch.”

“I hope she's okay,” Steve says and curls a hand in Clint's t-shirt, a non-subtle way of asking for a hug. Clint curls around him as best he can, and Tony joins them. They don't say anything else. They all know the risks, they all know that Clint is good at what he does, and they all know better than to ask for promises the others can't keep.

“I hope you cut his dick off,” Tony says instead.

“If they have one,” Steve points out, “it might be a female Beta or Omega.”

“I hope you cut their metaphorical dick off,” Tony says. Steve makes a sound of agreement.

Clint holds them both close and doesn't think about how long he could be gone. The last time he was sent away to track down a world-known assassin, he didn't return to the States for nearly three months. Then again, he'll hunt down _this_ assassin with said past-assassin's help, so he might be back home next week, for all he knows.

“I think I'm gonna crash,” Steve says eventually and presses a kiss to Clint's temple. And he does seem to be flagging slightly, his chest working a little harder than it should to push air in and out.

“Lemme help you up,” Clint says, and Tony gets the wheelchair. The look Steve gives them both says he's humouring them, which Clint doesn't mind because at least that means Steve accepts help.

Tony's twitchy, and Clint feels a similar itch under his skin that's not quite nervousness, but similar to it. It must show on them, because once in bed, Steve chuckles and kisses him. “I'm not much fun right now,” he murmurs against Clint's lips, “but you guys can say your goodbyes without me, I think.”

Clint snorts, although there's still a small, fragile part of him that just wants to hold Steve close and listen to his heartbeat. “Maybe we will,” he agrees.

“We'll think of you,” Tony says, and he tries to make it sound lecherous, but Clint can hear the strain in his voice. When Clint goes back out into the living room, he can hear Steve murmuring something to Tony. He can't tell the words, but it sounds like a reassurance.

Clint's stomach churns uncomfortably.

He's sitting in the middle of the couch, elbows resting heavily on his knees, when Tony comes back. He sits down next to Clint and bumps their knees companionably together, jolting Clint out of his own thoughts.

“Nervous?” Tony says, quieter than he usually is. Like he's the one who's recuperating after a bullet to the chest.

“I guess,” Clint says. He puts a hand on Tony's thigh, feels warmth seep through the jeans to his own palm. “I just... don't like leaving while Steve's like this. Feels like I'm fucking off when the going gets rough, y'know?” He tries to smile. It's not like that, he knows, and he's itching to take down the bastard who got Steve in the first place, but...

“Well, that's a load of crap,” Tony says lightly and covers Clint's hand with his own. “Hell, I'm jealous for you. I'd take off myself, if I didn't suck at staying low.”

“Would probably help if you didn't wear a gold-and-red flying suit that shoots missiles,” Clint points out.

“Probably.”

The silence is long, but not awkward.

“I didn't check,” Clint catches himself by surprise saying, “before I chased after the assassin. I didn't check to see if Steve was even alive.”

Tony stares at him, but surprisingly doesn't say a word.

“I mean, I knew that I wouldn't have much time, and the chances were close to zero I'd actually catch the guy, but...” Clint wrings his hands until the skin between his fingers starts to hurt. “He could've been shot dead on sight, and I wouldn't have known. Was impossible to know, the way he went down without a sound.”

“Feel guilty?” Tony asks, casually, like he knows the feeling. Clint knows that he does.

“Pretty much.”

“Well, I don't know if it helps or just... convinces you that you're a terrible person, but I would've done the same thing.” 

Clint grins. “Yeah, I don't know if that helps either.”

Finally, Tony chuckles. “Fuck you, Barton.” He shoves Clint, who sways back into his side, and then they sort of... stay in each other's personal space, close enough to share breath.

“That's... kinda what I'm in the mood for, to be honest,” Clint says. He still feels itchy and uncomfortable in his own skin, and fucking is a proven way to get rid of that feeling, so.

Tony doesn't so much answer as he pushes Clint onto his back. Clint barks out a laugh, and then Tony's on him, hands under his t-shirt and lips on his own. The scratch of Tony's goatee against his chin reminds Clint that he's here, with his Alpha, and not anywhere else.

Like on a bloodied sidewalk next to the body of his other-

Clint kisses back, harder, and tries his best to wrench of Tony's shirt without their lips ever separating. Somewhere in the fumbling, their pants get lost, and then there are thighs sliding against thighs, more skin than he's felt in close to a week, and Clint grips Tony's ass hard enough to almost bruise.

Tony laughs against his collarbone. “What's that for?”

“Just reminding you you're mine,” Clint says between kisses, “and Steve's,” he shimmies out of his underwear, “and no one else's.”

“Mmm, Omega possessiveness,” Tony says and bites his lip. “Very kinky.” Then there's nothing but skin and the soft couch cushions, and Clint's gratitude that they keep a bottle of lube in the table drawer nearby. Tony kisses him like he knows how long Clint might be gone for, and it's harder to lose themselves than usual, harder to push the real world away, but together and eventually they manage it.

“I'm good,” Clint says when Tony's about to go from two to three fingers, and pushes his hips up impatiently. Somehow, it feels easier to breathe Tony's air than his own, and he clutches Tony's neck to keep their noses touching.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Tony lines up, Alpha smell becoming more pronounced as he gets less tense and more turned on, and kisses Clint as he pushes in. It's good. It's good, and the initial twinge of discomfort is just another thing to distract him from tomorrow, so Clint grins against Tony's goatee and kisses it, and kisses it, and hisses when Tony starts to move.

Noses bumping and foreheads touching, they move like they're racing for the morning, even though they're doing the opposite. Too soon, Clint feels that pull, the feeling of climbing towards the top of a precipice, and he manages to grit out “Tony-” before Tony takes him in his hand and pumps one, two, and Clint comes with a strangled shout.

Tony joins him in the aftershocks, pushing his own sounds into Clint's mouth, and then they deflate together on the couch, sweaty and slick and momentarily carefree. Instead of slipping out, Tony just sort of... gathers Clint in his arms and holds him, cheek against Clint's temple.

Clint closes his eyes and focuses on all the parts of his body that ache in the good way. All the places where he and Tony touch, where they're interconnected. He almost wishes he was in heat, so Tony would be _connected_ with him for at least half an hour longer.

“Hey,” Tony murmurs and noses against his throat. “You're doing thinking things. Ruining the afterglow.”

“Sorry,” Clint says and looks at the ceiling. “Guess I'm just...”

“Yeah.” Tony kisses the dip of his throat. “C'mon, let's go get cleaned up and go to bed.”

“Go to Steve,” Clint says, and feels Tony's smile.

“Yeah.”

~*~

When the small plane takes off the next morning, Nat still hasn't been in touch. Clint has a lead going from a small motel by the Vlatava River, the last place Phil knows Nat stayed at. He lands at ten in the evening, local time, and by the time he's wrangled a cab and managed to find the right motel – speaking to his cab driver in broken Czech – it's midnight.

He gets a room on the same floor as 'pretty redhead lady' stayed in until two days ago, and as soon as he's unpacked and taken a quick shower, he sneaks outside and onto Nat's balcony. The door isn't even locked.

It smells like blood in here, faintly, which is... worrying. It doesn't smell like anyone's lived in here for a while, which is another point in Nat's favor, since she keeps her smell suppressed at all times when on a mission.

Clint searches the room and finds a few blood splatters on the carpet by the bed. They haven't been cleaned off properly, but it's not enough that it could've been lethal. There's no way to know who the blood belongs to, only that it's fairly fresh, and the rest of the room is clean. There's a small dent in the wall by the bed, close to the stains; the paint's missing, scratched off by whatever hit the wall. The dent matches the corner of the nightstand, and when Clint pushes it forward, away from the wall, he can see traces of paint. Like someone bumped the corner into the wall while jostling it.

It's while inspecting the paint that he notices something else, too; the barest hint of a footprint on the nightstand, under the cheap telephone and plastic vase placed there. Clint glances up at the ceiling; it doesn't look like any of the tiles have been moved in years.

“Attagirl,” Clint says to himself.

He puts the stuff from the nightstand to the bed before he climbs onto it. It's wobbly, and one corner bumps into the wall when he balances on top of it. Right where the dent is. Clint inches his fingers between the ceiling tile and the iron mesh framing it, pushes the tile aside, and lifts himself up into the ceiling.

In hindsight, he might as well have checked the ceiling first thing. Nat knew they'd send him down if she went dark, and he's always preferred to be above a room rather than in it.

It's dark and dusty up here, and Clint smothers the usual urge to sneeze or cough. Instead he looks around, using the hole he emerged from as his only light source. When there's nothing noteworthy where he is, he crawls over to a corner and starts going through the room methodically. It's in the third corner he sees it; something small and crumpled.

It's a red horse-chestnut flower, wilted and dried on the dusty tile. This particular flower has a different hue, Clint realises when he picks it up, but he recognises it all the same.

He knows where Natasha is.

~*~

The sun has just come up by the time Clint steps off the bus in Brno. From there on he walks, a good twenty minutes, to the safehouse. He's got a cap and headphones on, though no music. People around usually assume he's listening to music and won't hear them talking. He doesn't pick up anything suspicious, though that's not saying much.

When he gets to the right neighborhood, he takes a walk around the nearby houses for an extra check. Most of the houses around are quaint, small, and occupied by families with two-point-five kids or more. Risky, if the safehouse is ever found out, but less likely to be targeted in the first place.

Nothing seems amiss, and when it starts raining, Clint heads through the little wooden gate and jogs up through the little garden in front. An old, slightly rusty key is under the mat, and matches the look of the house. Clint fits it in the lock and turns it; it's almost impossible to hear the quiet whirr of machinery from the inside.

It's also all but impossible to see the scan the door takes of his fingerprints on the key.

The door unlocks smoothly, like a regular front door. Clint calls out “Honey, I'm home! I know it's a little early, but Frank from the copy store called and said our printer is ready for pick-up. How was your day?”

It's never a good idea to startle an agent, least of all Natasha.

The house is Spartan in its decorations; no pictures, nothing personal, just furniture, some generic stuff like magazines and knick-knacks, a couple of jackets hung on the back of doors to reinforce the illusion that this is someone's holiday home. There's a woman's jacket hanging in the foyer, fake Prada, that looks like a recent addition but doesn't smell like anything. Clint closes the front door behind himself; it double-locks automatically. After a quick glance into the living room and kitchen – both empty – he heads upstairs to the bedrooms.

Natasha's hair is nutmeg brown and looks like it needs a good wash. Most of her face is obscured by the pillow and said hair, and the rest of her is lumped under a thick, brightly embroidered quilt.

“Tasha?” Clint says and steps into the room.

“ _You're late_ ,” she grumbles in grumpy Russian, and raises her head just enough to give him a squinted glare. 

“ _Sorry, babe._ ” He sits down next to her on the bed, and lifts the quilt away. She's wearing a training bra and sweatpants, and the bandage wrapped around her midriff has a blood stain that looks and smells a day old.

She's pale and sweating. But her eyes are clear as ever, and when she sees his face falls, she rolls them at him. “I would have taken care of it myself, little bird. You're only a convenience.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Sure. Want me to help you with that?”

She grunts an affirmative and sits up. “I'm going to take a shower.”

He sneaks an arm around the side of her waist that isn't hurt, and she gets up mostly without his help. They walk more than they stagger into the bathroom, where there's a shower wide enough to fit three people. There's no bathtub, because that would be counter-productive in a house that's used for holding wounded agents.

Natasha sits down on the toilet and peels off her clothes methodically. She doesn't tremble. Neither does she shy away from his looks; Clint has probably seen Natasha naked more times than he has seen his Alphas naked, which is both funny and a little disturbing.

“What happened, Nat?” Clint says and sits down on the floor across from her. The floor has heating and it warms his ass nicely, like the seat of a newer car.

Her face shutters, subtly. It makes him want to stroke her cheek and apologise; he doesn't, because she wouldn't appreciate either gesture.

“I know him,” Natasha says and pulls off her bra. Gingerly, she gets back on her feet and walks over to the shower, palm resting against the tiled wall. “And he knows me.” She pauses, and turns on the water. “At least, he should.”

“Who is he?” Clint asks, feeling hoarse, all of a sudden.

Natasha closes her eyes against the stream, and she looks fragile like this, soft and beautiful. Like someone from a movie. The bandage gets slowly soaked; it will have to go, later. Clint should go get fresh ones from the med kit beside the toilet. But this is too important.

“He was Vanya when I knew him,” she says and looks at him through the water. “But we just called him 'The American'. That's what the people in charge would call him, at least. He never got a name, he-” she grabs the shampoo and squeezes the bottle, too hard. Her entire hand gets covered in cheap, creamy goo. “He chose the name himself, and confided in me,” she says quietly. “Vanya, from Ivan – the folk hero. He still believed in heroes, even after- whatever they had done to him.”

Clint stares at his hands while Natasha washes her hair. It's hard to reconcile the assassin who almost shot Steve through the heart with this guy, a guy who sounds like one of Natasha's first friends. It blurs the lines in Clint's head, makes it harder for him to hate the guy. “Red Room?” It's not so much a question as an invitation for her to continue; it's not like she could be talking about anything else.

Natasha leans her head forward into the spray and rinses, hair shielding her face like a curtain. “Mm.”

He waits another minute or so. “What do you mean, what they'd done to him?”

She washes her body carefully, face away from the spray. “They didn't let us talk often, but... he didn't remember much, or anything, from his past. Or his present. He also had a metal arm,” she adds as an afterthought.

Clint quirks an eyebrow at that. “Really?”

“It was very fancy,” she says dryly.

“What happened to him?”

“I don't know. He was still with the Red Room when I left.” She quirks a tired smile at him and shuts off the water. “It was difficult to keep in touch after you turned me against them.”

He huffs a laugh and gets up to grab a towel from the rack on the wall. “'The American?' Doesn't ring a bell.” He hands it to her as she shuts off the water.

“Clint...” She dries herself as swiftly and efficiently she can. When he comes to her with fresh bandages, she unwraps the old one and tosses it in the garbage bin under the sink. It's a slash wound more than a stab wound, Clint notices, but it's still deep. The stitching has been torn, like Nat stitched it herself and then did some acrobatics.

“Yeah?” He smooths the bandage over her abdomen, fingers as light as he can. She doesn't flinch, just looks straight at him, grave and worried like only his Nat can be.

“We called him The American,” Natasha says. “But everyone else... they called him The Winter Soldier.”

~*~


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is late! I'm trying to post one chapter per week, but Uni life is getting stupidly hectic, so next chapter might be late as well. Thanks so much for the comments and kudos so far, they keep me going <3
> 
> Chapter warnings: Allusions to brainwashing and forced drugging, vomiting(?), summary-style for most of the chapter. Sorry about that last one.

“I wasn't sure whether it was really him,” Natasha says, curled in her bed with a cup of black, unsweetened tea resting in her lap. “I couldn't be, not until I went up against him.” Her forehead is furrowed, like she's in both deep thought and pain, and that unsettles Clint more than the wound beneath her fresh bandage.

“Why'd you go dark and come here?” he has to ask. “I thought something had to be broken, or at least ruptured, to have you hiding like this.”

The look she sends him is not kind. “I'm not hiding. I'm regrouping.”

“And letting him get away.”

She shakes her head, drying curls bouncing. “He won't go far. He's hunting us as much as we're hunting him. We'll have to leave in a day or two.” She takes a sip.

He leans against her side and takes in the vanilla smell of her generic shampoo. It's faint, but comforting. “You didn't answer my question.”

Fingers delicate along the side, she hands him her cup so he can take a sip. The taste is earthy and sharp on his tongue. “I know,” she says. “I tracked him down in Prague. He knew, we fought. But-” she scrunches her eyes shut.

“What is it?” Clint murmurs.

“He recognized me.”

Clint waits for a follow-up on that, but nothing comes. “And? He knows you, Nat.”

But she shakes her head. “No, he _knew_ me before, but he doesn't now. He was confused.” She looks over at him and takes her half-empty cup back. “I don't think he knew me, only that he was supposed to. There was recognition in his eyes, but faint. I needed to see how it would play out.”

“You needed time.”

“Mm. And back-up.” It's as much a joke as it's not one.

“You know I'll have to let Phil know. At least so they don't send in the Cavalry.”

Natasha just watches him. It's the stare from Budapest, the stare he first got through a rifle scope with Phil's voice in his ear telling him to take the shot. The stare that got him to – briefly – betray his favourite boss (and crush) and agency, pack up his rifle, and go rogue for close to a week.

Natasha feels sorry for the assassin, Clint realizes with an unpleasant jolt. And as much as Clint hates the man for what he did to Steve, and more so for what he _almost_ did... sympathy is rare from Natasha, and rarer still from the Black Widow. Natasha isn't good with feelings of any kind, it's harder to sneak past her walls than it is to break into SHIELD headquarters, so when she willingly shows him her underbelly?

He has to give her the benefit of his doubt. Always.

“I won't tell them about Vanya,” Clint says and hates himself a little for it. Lying by omission to Phil, and through him, Steve and Tony, does not sit well with him. But this is as close to asking him for a favour as Nat will ever get. “I'll tell them we have to go dark for a while.”

Natasha doesn't say 'thank you'. She's not that kind of person. But she does press her forehead against his own for a moment, a brief connection that feels like the tightest, softest hug. Her brown curls tickle his face.

“ _You're welcome,_ ” Clint says.

~*~

There are two bedrooms, but when Nat settles down to sleep, Clint hovers by her bed. She regards him with a sour look, but doesn't ask him to leave. They don't sleep together often, and contrary to SHIELD rumours they've never actually had sex, but that's mostly because Natasha has never asked. Things are different for Clint, now that he's in an actual, serious relationship (the mind boggles), but had she ever asked, in their past, Clint would always and forever have agreed. It's true like he's told Phil, that he sees Nat as a sister of sorts, but sex is nice and Nat is nice, so Clint assumes that sex with Nat would be nice.

He doesn't know why she's never asked. But he likes to think it makes him... special to her, somehow.

He climbs over her so he can sleep squeezed between her and the wall – he knows she doesn't like anyone cutting off her exit routes. When he squirms under the covers, he makes sure not to poke her in the stomach or side, through the soft bandage. She squirms a little, but doesn't say anything as he settles.

He's in love with her, Clint thinks. But not... Not like he's in love with Steve, or Tony- or even Phil. There's sex involved with his Alphas, or eroticism or something – it's a part of what they are, what makes them good, that they fit together in that way. In different combinations. And it's the kind of love that Clint's read about in books, the burning kind, that sears his insides when they fight and makes everything hot and tingly when it's good. The kind of love that could scar him and hurt him and probably kill him.

The way he loves Phil is different. It doesn't burn, in the good _or_ the bad way. It's a quieter kind of love, like... like water, maybe. It sloshes inside him and sometimes, like when Phil was dead, it felt like Clint would drown from it; it felt cold and wet and foreign, it pulled him down until he was stuck in the dark. (Until that first spark of Tony-fire was lit.) But now, now that Phil is alive and things are good and Clint can touch him, be with him, without the awkwardness of heats and without any condemnation from his Alphas, Phil buoys him. Phil makes him float. Loving Phil is like those two days they had in Mombasa five years ago, after a finished mission, lounging on Nyali Beach. The sea water was salty enough to sting and treat all their minor scrapes, leaving them cleaner when they emerged – but it also kept them floating without any effort of their own. Clint could lie on his back, limbs akimbo, and stare at the sky with Phil beside him. That's Phil's love.

And Natasha... That's something different again. Clint loves Tasha, is _in_ love with Tasha, but it's not the kind of love that needs to be acted upon. If Tony and Steve are fire, and Phil is water, then Tasha's love is the earth, or maybe rocks – it's just _there_ , regardless of what they do with it, regardless of what happens in their lives. Clint loves touching Tasha, hugging her, snuggling with her, because that's the kind of guy he is. But he doesn't really want to have sex with her, or even kiss her, or take her out on a date or do anything romantic-like with her; that's not what this is _about_. She's an intrinsic part of his world, steady and unflinching even though she can be seen as cold. Earth doesn't coddle, earth can be brutal and hard and lethal and that's what she is. Clint knows Tasha isn't in a relationship right now, but if she was and he never got to hug her again, that would be okay. Love would still be there, like the Earth, quiet and constant.

Natasha grunts and turns around to face him. "You think too loudly."

He leans forward and presses his forehead against hers, briefly. "You know I love you, right?"

Huffing, she turns back around. " _Yes, little bird,_ " she murmurs.

~*~

This is a slightly different cat-and-mouse game than Clint is used to playing. Usually he knows who is cat and who is mouse; now, here, the roles change without warning.

He and Tasha leave two mornings after he showed up in Brno. Her hair is still a nutty brown, and he still wears a cap, and they sneak onto a train towards Bratislava while pretending to be a couple. Once they travel past Breclav across the Slovakian border, they hop off and board another train; south-east past Senica and Trnava, via Nitra towards Nové Zámky. It's nice, sort of; he and Natasha cut a similar path through here six years ago, during a complicated, multi-part mission to take down a human trafficking ring. Of course, at the time they were sort of... leisurely strolling through Slovakia and Hungary before they eventually ended up in Romania. Now they're running and hunting at the same time, and Clint has no real clue where they're planning to end up.

“I hurt him,” Natasha says when they reach the tiny train station in Nové Zámky. “Stabbed him in the shoulder where there was no metal.”

Clint chuckles and hoists his duffel onto his other shoulder. “Thought you said you went easy on him.”

“I did. We both retracted to-”

“Lick your wounds?”

“ _Regroup_ ,” she says, pointed. “He should be closer now.”

“You think he's picked up the trail again?” Clint says, though he'd be surprised if The American didn't; they're running, sure, but they're not trying to stay hidden. That would be counterproductive.

“He never lost it,” Natasha says. She looks pleased. Travelling like this does that to her; she gets all healthy-looking and flushed, invigorated-like, as if this is just some elaborate but totally chill hiking trip. Clint, like most other agents, tends to start flagging if more than a couple weeks go by without a decent night's sleep. They're not there yet, though, not even close.

He called Phil before they left the Czech Republic – gave him the blurb version without mentioning anything about The American, told Phil they had to go mostly-quiet from now on, promised to call once every seven days, and asked him to let his Alphas know he was alright.

Ten days later, he finally gets a glimpse of The Winter Soldier. It's in Gyõr, and it's not so much a meeting as it is the hint of movement on a rooftop opposite their motel room. But it's enough to know that they should swap roles again, and they sneak out under the cloak of dark.

By the time they get over to the building, the Winter Soldier is gone. “We go after him, yeah?” Clint says.

Natasha looks pinched. She smells the air – Clint wonders if she's getting anything, because he isn't – and lets out a harsh breath.

“ _What's wrong_?” he murmurs, in her past mother tongue. Sometimes it cuts through her thoughts more easily than English does, and he knows how nice that can be.

Thoughts can be foggy little bastards.

“We track him,” Natasha says. “But from afar. It's not time yet.”

Clint looks around them. The roof is empty and bleak and grey, the air smells like air, and there's no sign aside from his skin crawling that the Winter Soldier was ever here. “Not time for what? Also why? _Also_ , how do you know?”

“I can smell it,” she says. “He's de-stabilizing.” Her voice sounds far away, searching. She's standing so still, like someone pushed her pause button.

Something about that is so deeply disturbing to Clint. He's not thrilled about this mission himself – he doesn't even know how Steve is doing, and how Tony's dealing with everything – but this is looking more and more like a trek into Natasha's messy past, and Clint is getting less sure about that being a good thing. “What do you mean,” he says slowly, “de-stabilizing?”

“I don't know. His pheromones- his scent, it's different than the last time. It has changed, grown...” she frowns. “I want to say fresher, but sour at the same time. It's difficult to explain.”

“Really?” Clint takes another deep breath through his nose. “'Cause I get nada. Zilch.”

“Let's go,” Natasha says. “We leave first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Clint says, but Tasha's too far inside her own head to get annoyed at him for the snark.

~*~

Eventually, their cat-and-mousing becomes almost routine. The landscape changes, as they move further into Eastern Europe, but their tracking patterns don't much. It's clear by now that Natasha is only stalling for time, and considering the Winter Soldier is definitely more on the retreat than the offensive, it must be working.

He's slipping up, slowly but surely; on the border between Romania and Ukraine, Clint smells him for the first time. It's only a faint whiff, but it's _there_ , some complex mix of scents that he can't make out. It smells laboratory-like, though; artificial and drugged, something that leaves a stale and uncomfortable after-taste in his mouth.

A month into their slow chase, outside Kiev, it becomes clear that their hunted assassin is heading somewhere particular, and it's looking to be somewhere in Russia. They're running him ragged, which is good, but they're also running themselves ragged, which is less ideal.

Well, Natasha is as fierce and bright-eyed in the mornings as ever. But Clint... he doesn't know what's wrong, maybe it's nothing, but he is so _tired_ these days. His body's treating him as if he's been on the run for three months, not just mission-bound for one, and even Nat is noticing.

“Are you okay?” she asks one early morning, watching him with a searching look.

“Yeah, fine. Just... beat,” Clint says and puts down his slice of breakfast pizza. He was starving a few minutes ago, but now, the smell of cheese is making him nauseous.

“Your scent,” she says, but stops herself.

“My scent what? Should I take a shower or something?” He smells his armpit. A little rank, maybe, but no worse than happens all the time.

“Nothing,” she says, but she has something-face. Clint's about to call her on it, but then the one slice of pizza he _did_ eat decides it has a personal grudge against him, and he spends the rest of the morning in the bathroom.

Natasha stays out of it – she's not the nurturing type. Clint knows that, and he's fine with it, because he doesn't need someone in here with him, babysitting him or pressing a cold cloth against his neck. He doesn't _need_ that shit, but he kind of misses it anyway. Guess he got kind of spoiled, living with Tony and Steve.

It had almost made all the vomiting worth it, being... taken care of, like that. Being made to feel precious, almost, like he was worth something, without knowing he'd had to pay it back somehow.

Like with Marco.

“Are you finished?” Natasha says from outside the door.

“Yeah,” Clint grunts and flushes, before he gets back onto his feet. “Don't eat the pizza.”

~*~

“Report, Special Agent,” Phil says. He sounds tense.

Clint wants to ask what's going on home, if there's been any attacks on New York or any close-call apocalypses he hasn't heard of. He wants to ask if Steve is okay, if he's walking yet – if his super-soldier body has completely healed itself by now. He wants to ask if Tony's doing that thing where he pretends he doesn't care, and buries himself in work and tinkering, when he's really just freaking out about the people he loves.

He doesn't. “We're tracking him past the Russian borders. It shouldn't be too long now, sir.” He can practically hear Phil's nod.

“Are you both okay?” That's a little more Phil, a little less Agent Coulson. “You sound rough.”

Clint chuckles. It's true, his voice has that particular hoarseness it gets after half an hour with his head in the toilet. “Caught a virus, sir,” he says. “Nothing big.”

Two mornings puking in the course of a week. That's not a pattern, not yet. There's no reason to think back on six months ago, about his own traitorous body and hollow abdomen. So he doesn't. He just ends the conversation with Phil, and leaves with Natasha when she goes, and looks for patterns in the Winter Soldier's movements instead.

Two mornings turn into three turns into four, as Rossosh turns into Liski turns into Voronezh. Natasha becomes quieter and more shuttered, Clint becomes more fatigued, and the Winter Soldier's smell becomes more pronounced and fragmented.

“He's falling apart, isn't he?” Clint says before they board yet another train, this one towards Saratov. 

Natasha makes a noise of agreement. “And so are you. What's wrong with you?” It's less confrontational than she usually is, and more curious.

He just wants to sleep forever. His head hurts, and he's not nauseous right now but it feels like he can get so at any given time; he's not sleeping well, and even when he is, it still feels like he's getting half the sleep he really needs. Yesterday, he stood up from the bed and nearly fell over from a sudden dizzy spell. It had disappeared as soon as it had come, but the fear of being sick when they confront the Winter Soldier is becoming a visceral thing now, something real that Clint can't just push away.

“I think,” Clint says slowly, feels the words and thoughts out as they burn on his tongue and in his mind, “that it's happening again.”

“Pseudocyesis.” It's not a question, and Natasha doesn't say anything about it when he flinches.

“Yeah. I kinda hope it's not, but... yeah.”

“Hm,” she says. Her arms are folded and she's still watching him like he's a mouse she might pounce on.

“At least,” he says when her stare doesn't let up, “that's the only thing I can think of that doesn't mean I'm, y'know. Actually sick.”

“Please don't be sick,” she says. Demands, really. “We're almost there and you know it. He's been trying to shake us off for days now.”

“I know.” The scent traces Clint can pick up from the Winter Soldier are getting more tinged with desperation and exhaustion. Something close to fear, as well, but muted and blocked, like it's being forcibly suppressed from his system. It's hard to tell, at least for Clint. He thinks Natasha has a better idea of what's going on with her American, but if she's not telling, Clint won't pry.

Natasha tells him, outside Sarotov, of a Red Room facility near Tolyatti. It's a day's travel away, but it looks to be where the Winter Soldier's going. The facility Natasha was in has long since been levelled, but there could be others nearby. Others SHIELD never got to and Natasha never saw.

There's a clock ticking in the back of Clint's mind, and it's almost down to zero. Whether 'zero' means the time he'll see his Alphas again, or if it means something more sinister, Clint doesn't want to dwell on.

~*~


	5. Chapter 5

“An asylum,” Clint says numbly and looks at the warped and flagging building behind the electrical fence. “It's an asylum. Of course it fucking is.”

Natasha doesn't answer, just vaults over the fence. When she touches the burnt, grassy ground on the other side, she barely makes a sound.

“Show-off,” Clint mutters and goes after her, albeit somewhat less graciously. He maybe tumbles to the ground and gets dust all over his face in the process, too.

The asylum can't have been in use – regular use, at least – for at least a decade. It looks about ready to come down, only a few Russian letters left on the sign on the front, soot and tar clinging to the grey concrete. There's been a fire, at some point, but aside from having blackened the building and scorched the surrounding earth, it hasn't done much visible harm. It barely even smells burnt anymore, just ash-like and dry. 

The dim light shields them somewhat from the broken windows of the building, and they sneak up to the wall. They're not front door people, so they find a window instead, and Natasha goes in before him. Clint has long since realised that Natasha needs to take point on this mission, and he's okay with that. Prefers it, even.

Maybe if he's got an order not to engage, it will keep him from blowing the Winter Solder's brains out once they meet face to face.

The damage is more evident once they're inside. The walls are scorched black, and the twisted and burned remains of equipment in the rooms have been damaged beyond recognition. They stay on the alert and armed, Clint on Natasha's six as they slowly make their way through the crippled hallways. Clint took an extra dose of suppressors this morning and Natasha's got a Red-Room-given 'gift', so they barely leave scent marks where they go. There's no sign of the Winter Soldier, but Clint isn't expecting any.

The first floor is bare, fire aftermath aside. There's an uncomfortable, clammy feeling here that's not quite physical, not quite psychological. It's similar to how Clint feels when he goes to prisons, or other abandoned places where a lot of people have died. It makes his skin crawl – and his stomach turn uncomfortably, but Clint isn't sure if that's because of the place or the pseudocyesis. He prefers not to think about the latter.

There's no working electricity, so once they go downstairs to the basement level and the windows no longer help them out, it gets as dark as the scorched walls upstairs. Using a flashlight is the worst advertisement for their presence, and they can't fumble around in the dark either, so they put on their SHIELD-issued goggles and flip them to night vision mode.

It looks like the fire never got down here. The hallways are dingy, but not damaged, and the equipment in some of the lab rooms are recognisable. Electro shock therapy. Bindings, old-fashioned gynocologist's chair, crude surgery equipment.

Charming, Clint thinks and sees a slight tick in Natasha's jaw. 

Despite the gradual escalation of the creepiness of the medical equipment – it stops being stuff Clint has seen in surgery rooms and ends up being stuff he's only encountered in torture dungeons – nothing happens. There's no one around, no smells, no sounds. Not until they reach the end of the floor and find another stairway down, one further level. This stairway isn't big and official-looking like the last one. This one's small and winding, hid behind a door that someone has clearly and recently tried to jam shut.

They share a look, and Natasha signs _I can smell them_ at him.

' _Them?_ Clint mouths back at her. He still can't smell anything – not until Natasha slips through the narrow doorway and he goes after her. The Winter Soldier must have bumped against the door here, because there's a whiff of his medical scent- along with, Clint realises, someone else. Beta, male. And Alpha, female. They smell sour and unpleasant, one like moulding hay and the other like... Trick Shot, really. Like sour sweat and slaps across the face.

Clint can't pinpoint what a slap across the face smells like, exactly, but he recognizes it even so.

It's still dark, but once they reach the bottom of the stairs, Clint can see a red pin-prick in the distance. Natasha sneaks off, fast as a shadow, and disables the security camera within seconds. Clint takes stock of their surroundings; another bland hallway, cleaner than the others, with fewer closed doors. These doors, unlike the ones upstairs, are electronically locked. There's a quiet buzzing sound coming from somewhere beyond the hallway, behind the door at the end.

When they approach it, the buzz dissolves into voices. Clint can hear them, hear that there are two distinct voices and they're speaking Russian, but his ears have never been as great as his eyes. He frowns at Natasha, who starts to sign the translations at him.

" _\- for its own sake, this is against protocol_ ," says the first voice – a man.

" _Protocol won't help if it suffers another episode,_ " the woman responds. " _It clearly needs-_ "

" _There's no time!_ " the first snaps. " _It said they were coming, we must leave right now-_ "

" _They will be here before we can escape_ ," the second says. " _The most important thing is to prevent The Soldier from deteriorating further. It must be wiped now_."

Clint frowns and signs _'Wiped?'_ at Natasha, who shakes her head. Clearly not something she encountered with the Red Room, then. He's not sure if that makes him feel better or worse.

Then, a new voice. It's not even a word, barely a sound – but it's there, just audible to Clint. A small whimper.

Natasha's eyes widen a fraction. The Winter Soldier. He doesn't sound like he's doing too good, Clint thinks, and can't help the vindictive feeling of joy that bubbles up inside him.

_“Yes, we wipe. Quick.”_

Suddenly they're running out of time, it seems; whatever this wiping thing, the people – doctors, maybe – want to get it done before Clint and Natasha get there. So they should get there.

Like, now.

~*~

They remove their goggles before Natasha kicks in the door, but the bright-white light of the laboratory still stings Clint's hypersensitive eyes. The room is small and in sharp contrast to the rest of the building, clean and tidy. A row of machines are lined up against the opposite wall; they look like old computers from the seventies. They're full of big, red, fancy buttons and little levers that he wishes he could pull.

The most conspicuous thing in the room – aside from the two startled people in lab coats right by the door – is a big, complicated mess of wires and steel that seems to be a chair... and the person currently strapped into it.

The two doctors shout something in surprise that Clint doesn't register; he and Natasha are by them instantly, and since neither of the doctors seem to have martial arts expertise, a couple of blows to the head is enough for them to go down.

“ _Vanya, stand down_ ,” Natasha barks out. The Winter Soldier, in the time it took them to get the doctors, has gotten out of the chair. He doesn't seem to be armed, not with a gun at least, but he charges Clint – the closest – with a glinting knife in one hand. The other one is metal, the sturdy kind, and looks like a crude version of Tony's armor.

The Soldier probably doesn't need another weapon, not with an arm like that.

Clint ducks away from the first punch. The Winter Soldier keeps Clint between him and Natasha as best he can, and Natasha seems reluctant to shoot – something that's so unlike her that it nearly distracts Clint from the fighting. The guy's good in hand-to-hand, too good, and his metal arm is strong enough that every blocked punch makes Clint's arms ache. The Winter Soldier doesn't say anything, doesn't acknowledge Natasha's earlier words; he fights like a man possessed, with a ferocity that's oddly displaced seeing as how emotionless his face is. It's mostly hidden by a black mask that covers his mouth, and long, brown, lifeless hair that shields his eyes. Even so, Clint can see the emptiness in them, like the guy's a robot.

If Natasha didn't claim to know him, Clint would bet the guy really is a machine.

Somewhere in the blur, Natasha has put away the gun, kicked the knife out of the Soldier's hand, and joined the fistfight. Even then, the Winter Soldier holds his own; he's not winning, but he isn't losing either. Clint takes a bad blow to the side of his face, close enough to make his ears ring, and Natasha takes a kick to the stomach in the exact same place her wound have just healed. The Soldier takes more hits than either of them; to the face, to the ribs, to the side, but just shrugs them off like he can't feel them. Clint isn't absolutely sure he _can_ – there's nothing going on in the eyes, nothing at all, and in between breaths and jabs and shifts so fast they feel like dance steps, Clint has time to freak out about _who the fuck is this guy behind the mask?_

“ _Vanya_!” Natasha says again, sharper, not breathless but slowly getting there. Clint can feel it too; he's dizzy, all of a sudden, and his stomach drops like he's going to puke.

This time, the Winter Soldier's eyes flicker to Natasha's, and he seems to freeze in place. It doesn't last long, but it's _there_ , and there's _finally_ emotion.

He looks scared. There's a sudden scent in the air, cold and heavy, and Natasha steps forward and rips away the mask.

He looks... young, is the first thing that drops into Clint's head. Really young. Easily ten years Clint's junior, and that- that can't be right, can it? Except that Natasha looks... sad. Plain and clear the way Natasha never is, so it has to be the guy, it has to be her Vanya.

They're all just staring at each other, like they're playing that kid's game where everyone pretends to be statues. Natasha's still clutching Vanya's mask, and he still stinks of chemicals and fear. Clint is wary of breaking the moment, not only because it might earn him a metal fist to the face, but also because Natasha might just be getting somewhere with the guy.

There's something vaguely familiar about him, but Clint can's put his finger on it.

“ _You know me,_ ” Natasha says, loud in the silence between their breaths.

Vanya's eyes flicker over to the monster chair beside them. He... twitches, like a mosquito just whizzed by his ear, and it's like his face forgets to emote and blanks out. Like one of Steve's canvases.

“ _No,_ ” he says. His voice is low and so rough it's almost gravelly.

Everything unfreezes. Natasha drops the mask and blocks the Winter Soldier's fist, spinning around to plant her other elbow in his stomach. He goes down, clutching Natasha's hair in one fist so she goes down with him. The other arm, the metal one, shoots out and grips the closest thing it can reach. It looks like a knee-jerk reaction, like he doesn't even realise he's doing it, which is maybe why Clint doesn't pull back in time.

Natasha, straddling the Winter Soldier's chest while he tries to pull her hair out, strikes him with a series of precise blows to the side of his face. He lets out a pained grunt and pulls out a handful of her hair before he passes out. Simultaneously, his metal fingers close around Clint's ankle like a vice and _crunch_.

By the time Clint goes down, momentarily blinded by the sheer fucking _pain_ of having those small goddamn bones in his ankle and foot broken, Natasha has beaten the Winter Soldier unconscious.

 _Fuck_. Clint wishes _he_ could be unconscious right now. He maybe makes a wounded noise and curls up on the cement floor. His foot is _still_ caught in the fucker's metal grip, _fuck_.

“Clint.” Natasha checks the Winter Soldier's pulse before she leaves him where he lies, and crouches by Clint's side so she can try to pry the fingers away from his rapidly swelling leg. “Clint, we have to call Phil.”

Clint throws up in reply.

~*~

It's eight hours of waiting before SHIELD gets to them. As soon as they could start tracing Clint's burner phone, the countdown started, and it really wasn't much to do but lie in a lump and wait for Natasha's painkillers so kick in. Clint managed to clean his mouth with some water, and by now, he feels a little bit less like crying from the pain in his leg.

The Winter Soldier and the doctors are still out, and trussed up like only Natasha can manage in the opposite corner. Natasha herself has checked out the rest of the basement, and spent over an hour poking carefully at the monster chair thing. As far as Clint knows, although he's been in and out for a while now, she hasn't accidentally pressed any wrong buttons yet. SHIELD will want a good look at it.

Clint is ready to come home now. It's been a _long_ six weeks and the final bit sucked balls. He's glad none of them are really hurt – even though Natasha's face looks bruised and there's still a clump of her hair on the ground – but he isn't ready to stop yelling internally about his foot yet. It's definitely broken, it is _super broken_ and that means he's out of commission for at least two months. He knows exactly how many kinds of crazy he will go in that time; he's tried it before. Never with his foot, but once with one leg, another with his dominant hand (easily his least favourite injury) and once, memorably, _both_ his legs.

Maybe it would've felt less shitty – and alienating, really, Clint doesn't like not being able to pull his weight – if Steve would be recuperating alongside him, if they could rib off each other and maybe do physical therapy together. But it's been six weeks, and with the serum, Steve should be all good by now.

God, Steve. Tony. _Phil._

He's freezing. The floor isn't too cold, although it's hard and eight hours of it have fucked up his back, and Natasha found a couple of the jackets from his duffel bag to cover him with. Still, he's shivering badly through the numbness, which is possibly a sign that he's getting a fever and not really a great sign. Natasha removed his crumpled boot some time ago and looked at his ankle. Painkillers and extra jackets aside, there hasn't been much else to do until the paramedics arrive. 

As soon as someone else enters the room, Natasha is in front of Clint. She doesn't do anything, just stands there with her hands clasped behind her back and her head tilted to one side, but it makes the first SHIELD agents stumble and grind to a halt.

Clint giggles drunkenly. Natasha's version of protective is closer to a lioness keeping their prey from encroaching predators than anything motherly, and it's a great novelty to be on the right side of that.

“Romanov.” _That voice._

“Phil!” Clint says, a lot louder than he thought it would be. Maybe these painkillers are working a bit better than usual.

Phil is dressed in combat gear and he looks amazing, all professional and unruffled and not hurt, there's not a broken foot anywhere on him and that's great, that's really great.

“You look great,” Clint says honestly. “No foots on you.”

Phil does a complicated thing with his face and looks at Natasha. “What on earth did you give him?”

“Just Vicodin,” Natasha says.

SHIELD agents spread across the room, like ants or something, and Clint notes that they're already getting the Winter Soldier into special cuffs and hauling him out of here. Phil crouches by Clint and paramedic people come to him with a white stretcher that actually looks comfortable right now.

“He's high,” Phil says. He grabs Clint's wrist, maybe to take his pulse, maybe just to touch him. Clint is good with both. Actually, Clint is good with pretty much anything right now; his foot doesn't even bother him anymore, and everything is floaty and wispy at the edges and maybe he should sleep. Maybe sleep is good.

“Of course, Barton,” Phil says. “Go to sleep. You did good here.”

“Did good here,” Clint mumbles and closes his eyes. His hand finds Phil's fingers. “Missed you.”

“Later, Barton,” is the last thing Clint hears before he falls asleep.

~*~

He sleeps fitfully on the plane, waking and falling back asleep without knowing the difference. His dreams are loud and too bright and when he wakes up, he can't remember what they were about. His foot starts to ache again as he comes down from whatever the hell was in that Vicodin, and eventually he feels up to looking around himself.

His stretcher has been secured to one of the sides in the Quinjet, and Natasha and Phil are sitting nearby. They're talking quietly together, too quiet for Clint to hear over the noise of the engines, but when he lifts his head, Natasha unbuckles from her seat and slides over to him.

“Heyy,” he says, which means he's still not entirely sober, because there was more than one 'y' in that. “You okay?”

“I'm fine,” she says. Her brown hair tickles his face and he knows she'll dye it red again as soon as they get home. “How are you feeling?” Her tone is harder than the words suggest, but that's all worry and he appreciates that.

“Groggy. My leg hurts. I fucked it up good.” He pauses for a moment, takes stock of his own body and what it's telling him. “Back's killing me. Kinda dizzy too, but it's fine. I'm fine.” He lies back down.

“We land in an hour.”

He nods and shifts, winces when it reminds him that he really has to go. “Need the can, too.”

“Can you wait until we land?” The corner of her mouth quirks into the semblance of a smile.

“Let's hope so. How's your buddy with the friendly arm?”

The smile disappears. Clint almost feels bad about that. “Sedated,” she says and gets back into her seat.

~*~


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have just started my MA dissertation, so unfortunately, updates are going to be sporadic for a good while. Most all of my writing hours will be going to that, but because of the recent Nepal earthquake, I've decided to lend some of my efforts to the [FandomAid auction](http://fandomaid.livejournal.com/71810.html) on Livejournal. Please feel free to check out my [auction thread](http://fandomaid.livejournal.com/71810.html?thread=2117250#t2117250); I can write scenes or sequels to existing fics, if you want to donate.
> 
> Thank you all so much for your comments and kudos so far, it means a lot to me. I apologise in beforehand for the cliffhanger. <3

Clint is admitted to the hospital wing before he gets to see anyone back home. He tries to look around, stuck on a rolling hospital bed that makes his back twinge painfully, but can't spot Tony or Steve. They're probably out in the waiting area or something.

There's a part of him that doubts they're here at all, and he hates that part. It's dumb and it belongs to a different time, a different guy. A different Alpha.

They do an x-ray on his foot, and then an MRI. Apparently, he needs surgery. The Winter Soldier broke enough bones in his foot that most of them need to be put together right and it includes screws and pins and a bunch of metal. There's a whole bit the doctor tells him, about complicated talus fractures and metatarsal dislocations, but Clint doesn't listen past the realisation that he'll be stuck in a cast for three fucking months.

He only gets local anaesthesia. He lies on the operating table and stares at the ceiling and never looks down, because he's been tortured before, he knows what the inside of his own body looks like. There's no curiosity left in him when it comes to that.

Surgery's pretty quick, though, all things considered. And afterwards, he gets a cast on his foot and he gets to sit in a wheelchair, which is great. Super. Great.

He also gets more painkillers, which is the least awful part of his day so far, and then he gets to see-

“Clint!” Steve brightens, like Clint is the sun or something, and runs across the patient lounge like something out of a rom-com. He stops right in front of Clint, arms outstretched, like he didn't think through his sweep-Clint-into-his-arms plan and only now realizes that Clint is currently wheelchair-bound. His smile dims a little, but it doesn't disappear. “How are you? How's the leg? Can I hug you, is that alright? Or is that- are you in pain? Do you need something- wait, are you hungry? Or thirsty?”

Tony, making his way over in a more forcibly-casual pace, laughs. He's also grinning like the room just got brighter, though, which makes something small and uncertain in Clint's stomach relax.

“That's a lot of questions, Steve,” Clint says. “But hugs are good.”

Steve stoops down, and Clint gets his arms around Steve's neck. It's a bit awkward, but they make it work, and it's with his face pressed into his Alpha's neck – getting that first whiff of familiar _incense and gumbo and soap_ that makes Steve smell like home to him – that it hits Clint again how much he's fucking _missed_ these guys.

He clings, maybe. But Steve clings right back at him, and a full minute goes by before he eases back so that Tony can give him a hug of his own.

“Those were some long six weeks,” Tony says, and he doesn't elaborate, but it's like an _I love you_ even so. Clint holds him closer and kisses him when he pulls back.

“How's the leg?” Tony asks and glances down at the cast. “Doctor said it was a complex fracture.”

“Actually, it was more like seven fractures,” Clint says with a grimace. “And some dislocations. I didn't get all of it, it's in my file. Where's Phil?”

“He's still with the prisoner,” Steve says and goes behind him to push the wheelchair. “He told us he'd be by the tower as soon as he could, but you can go home for now. No debriefing just yet.”

“They won't tell us anything, not yet,” Tony says and shakes his head. “I wish I was surprised.”

“They'll tell us in due time, I'm sure,” Steve says.

“Yeah,” Clint says vaguely. “Can we get out of here? I feel like I haven't slept anywhere comfortable in a month. My back's killing me.”

“Absolutely,” Steve says. “Bruce and Thor are waiting outside for you.” Both him and Tony smell happy and excited.

Good smells.

~*~

Clint wakes up in what feels like the middle of the night. It's still dark outside, and both Tony and Steve are fast asleep next to him. Clint lies on his back on the right side of the bed, his busted leg resting on a couple pillows, with Steve breathing into the side of his neck. One of his Alpha's arms are slung protectively across his stomach.

For a little while, Clint doesn't know what woke him up. His foot aches, but not too badly, and he feels a little queasy but otherwise okay. There's a bucket by the side of the bed – in case of side effects from the painkiller cocktail – and the clock on the night stand tells him it's four in the morning.

Then, sharp pain spikes through Clint's ankle and his stomach roils, so he barely manages to roll onto his side to throw up into the bucket.

That wakes up his boyfriends, alright.

“Clint, hey,” Steve mumbles, sleep-slurred, and moves over so he can put his hand on the back of Clint's neck and _god_ , it's nice to feel that again.

Tony pads across the room, presumably to check that Clint got everything in the bucket. “Painkillers fucking with your system, huh?”

“Ugh,” Clint says. He misses the contact when Steve leaves, but Steve comes back with a glass of water and a wet cloth, so Clint forgives him. It's a lot less hassle than getting to the bathroom, anyway.

Tony takes the bucket to the bathroom to clean it, and Clint sinks back against the pillows once he's rinsed the digested-food taste out of his mouth. It annoys him on a very primitive level that he can't turn onto his side and snuggle into _Steve's_ side, but Steve is still here with him, which is a nice second-best.

Steve laughs under his breath. Clint raises his eyebrows at him.

“I'm sorry,” Steve says and kisses him on the cheek. “I'm sorry you're not feeling well, that's not what I want. I just- I missed this.”

“Me puking?” He wishes he could brush his teeth. His breath could kill right now.

“No!” It's hilarious how wounded Steve looks at that, like he's horrified that Clint might honestly thinks that. “No, just- I like taking care of you. We both do. It's been a... long while.”

“Although I personally could survive without the puking,” Tony says and puts the clean bucket back on the floor.

“Thanks,” Clint mumbles. “And sorry.”

“Not a problem. You feeling okay?” Tony sits down at the edge of Clint's bed, like his mother used to when he was sick as a kid. When his mother was still alive, and they still had a house.

“Foot hurts,” Clint sighs. 

“You want another painkiller? Bruce said you'd be good for another round since... an hour ago,” Tony says after a look at the clock.

“Please.”

Tony goes off to find the little glass of white pills, and Steve sort of... idly plays with Clint's hair in the meantime. Like he's just looking for an excuse to touch Clint, something that Clint is entirely okay with. Steve's wearing his old-guy pajama pants, the ones he wears when he knows the chance of sex is small, or when he feels cold – he doesn't say, but Clint and Tony both know when those days happen – or when he wants Tony to make fun of him for said pants. But his chest is bare, and in the low light, Clint can see a pale, puckered mark right beside where his heart is.

He touches the faint scar. Steve watches him, the pec muscle jumps at Clint's touch. “It's weird,” Clint says quietly.

“What's weird?” Steve says with a small smile. 

“It's the first scar I've ever seen on you.” The scarred skin is smoother than the rest, like Clint's own scars. He has so many of them, where Steve has none. Had none.

“It will disappear in time,” Steve says. “My scars do that.”

“You're okay otherwise?”

“Tip-top shape,” Steve says and kisses his cheek. Clint kind of wants a mouth kiss right now, but his breath is still gross, so he kisses Steve's collarbone instead. His hand stays where he is, so he can feel Steve's heartbeat.

Tony comes back with the painkillers and drops two small blue pills into Clint's palm. Clint swallows them down with the rest of his water and hopes his unsettled stomach will let them pass.

“You good?” Tony asks.

“Yeah. Thanks. Sorry for waking you.”

“Not a problem,” Tony says, and Steve murmurs his agreement. “I'm just sorry we can't do much to, y'know. Get us tired again.” He winks and gets back into bed.

“You have no idea,” Clint grouses. “At least you guys had each other, I've barely jerked off since I left.”

Steve chuckles.

“Yeah, but it's not the _same_ ,” Tony sighs. “Steve is so...” he makes vague gestures.

“What's wrong with me during sex?” Steve says, but teasing.

“You're just a little bit forties sometimes, babe.”

“I'm _from_ the forties!”

“That's what I'm _saying_ , don't get your grandpa pants in a twist-”

The two of them keep ribbing playfully off each other, and Clint falls asleep with that as his soundtrack. He misses it when they quiet down and look down at him instead, matching frowns on their faces.

“He's so pale,” Steve says. “And thin. Is he too thin? I feel like he's too thin.”

“Calm down, Mama Bear,” Tony says and kisses him, although he doesn't lose the frown. “It's just the mission and injury. He'll be back to himself in no time.”

Clint twitches in his sleep. They watch him.

“He smells different,” Steve says. “Or- is that just me?”

“No,” Tony says quietly. “No, it's not just you.”

~*~

There is, Clint muses the next morning, one upside to having had his leg broken before. Learning to walk with a cast and crutches is a fucking _lot_ easier the third time around. Even so soon after the cast was put on, and half delirious from the painkillers (are they stronger than they used to be? It feels like he's been perpetually drunk since he got on the Quinjet), he's been able to hobble around the apartment without falling on his face even once.

Steve... hovers, there's really no other way to put it. He claims there's things to do in the apartment and half-heartedly cleans around where Clint is, but he keeps glancing and asking if Clint wants something and if he's okay and this is going to get really old, really fast.

“Steve!” Clint snaps sometime around lunch, and dumps down onto the couch. He refuses to acknowledge that the landing hurts his foot, he _refuses_. “Sit the fuck down and stop hovering, you're driving me nuts.”

Steve sinks down on the opposite chair like a puppy that's been told to heel. “Sorry. I don't mean to. Are you okay?”

“Like _there_ ,” Clint says and points at him. “Don't do the questions, not all the time!”

“I can't... ask questions?” Steve says, a mix of kicked-puppy and overly-sensible-boyfriend.

“Not if they're going to be a variation of “are you okay” every ten minutes, no.” He shifts back into the cushions and pushes his crutches away from him. His lower back aches even with the nice mattress he's sleeping on now, his head throbs with the small beginnings of a headache, and he's just fucking _miserable_.

He must make some kind of noise, because Steve smiles a little and comes over to him. “Hey.”

Clint slumps over to bash his forehead against Steve's shoulder repeatedly.

“I'm sorry I hover,” Steve says and scratches lightly at the hair at the nape of his neck. “Although... can I point out that it's possible you're irritable because you're miserable and in pain, and not _just_ because I annoy you?”

Clint looks up at his Alpha.

“Please don't hurt me,” Steve says, but his eyes are smiling.

“... maybe a little.”

“Okay.” Steve kisses his temple. Somehow the TV gets turned on, and the comforting sounds of _Gossip Girl_ come on in the background. Clint suspects JARVIS.

It's a... difficult transition, going from a mission to the couch. Especially with a fucked-up leg and an assassin he still doesn't know a name of, aside from the one he's promised Natasha not to tell anyone about. Everything still feels so unfinished, so up in the air, that Clint can't really seem to find his vacation headspace. Not only that, but Tony's at work, so Clint hasn't even seen him today.

“Jay?” Clint asks, over the sounds of Blair and Chuck fighting on-screen. “When's Tony coming back?”

“I believe he has a last meeting at four thirty, Agent Barton,” JARVIS replies smoothly. And since Tony wouldn't know how to find his pants without his AI, Clint is inclined to believe him.

“You miss him?” Steve says against Clint's neck. He's somehow managed to arrange them so they're cuddling on the couch, and it didn't even jostle Clint's aching foot.

“Maybe.”

“Mmm.” Steve makes a contemplating noise. “You know, I half thought me and Tony would drive each other nuts while you were gone – and we did, a little, don't get me wrong – but I didn't want to strangle him at all during those six weeks.”

Clint grins up at his Alpha. “Not even once?”

“Not even once.” They kiss lazily, so much that it turns into a make-out session, and Clint doesn't even feel bad for missing Serena and Dan's first kiss on-screen. He _does_ feel bad for the fact that they can't do much else, not yet – any time he shifts, his foot starts throbbing and that pretty much kills his libido – but slow kisses from one of his boyfriends is pretty neat, too.

And he doesn't even feel like he has to throw up. That's a big win.

~*~

Clint and Steve end up watching Gossip Girl for the rest of the afternoon. Steve stops pretending that he has anything else he'd rather be doing than mothering Clint, and Clint dozes off a couple times as the painkillers do their usual thing. It's novel, to fall asleep against Steve's chest and nuzzle against one of his threadbare t-shirts. Steve's super serum keeps him a couple degrees warmer than Tony and Clint, which makes him the ideal heater whenever they feel chilly.

They talk a little as well, just low murmurs, inane chatting that's not really about anything. It's just an excuse to talk, to listen to the other's voice, to while away the hours until Tony comes back home.

When he does, Clint is jolted out of an unpleasant dream. “Shrimp!” he says, before he realizes what's going on.

Tony grins and shrugs off his suit jacket. He's going simple-style today, his suit such a dark maroon it's almost black. Clint wishes he could peel Tony out of it. “Shrimp?” Tony asks.

“I'm uh, they were flying,” Clint says and sits up in the couch. Steve helps him out, but his foot still hurts. A lot, actually – his painkillers are wearing off. And he needs to pee, too, now that he's up.

“Of course they were,” Tony says and leans down for a kiss – first with Clint, then with Steve. “I should take a shower, get the executive grease ball smell off me.”

“Sir?” JARVIS says, and Tony immediately straightens. “Agent Coulson asks if you are available.”

“All three of us?” Tony says.

“Yes, Sir. He says it is a matter of importance.”

“We're all here, we're good,” Tony says with an odd look at the two of them in the couch. Steve shrugs; Clint says nothing. He has his suspicions, considering he hasn't been in for debriefing yet. He can't say anything, though.

“Agent Coulson will arrive in approximately fifteen minutes, Sir.”

“Cool beans, gives me enough time to grab a quick shower.” Tony slips out, and Clint should go to the bathroom, but Steve holds him a little closer and the couch is just too damn comfy.

“I suppose it's to do with your assassin,” Steve says and hooks his chin over Clint's shoulder.

“Technically, that would be _your_ assassin,” Clint says, because there's barely a scar on Steve now, so he figures it's okay to joke about it. Except he feels a little sick right after, so maybe it's still too soon.

“Good point,” Steve says. They stay together, lost in thought, until Tony comes back from the shower. He's dressed in one of Steve's t-shirts and a ratty pair of jeans, and his hair is still wet. His eyes look clearer – he usually looks more tired coming from a board meeting than from a sixteen-hour stint in his own workshop.

“Tony, do me a favor?” Clint says, because he's not ready to get out of Steve's hug yet.

“More painkillers?” Tony's off towards the bedroom already. “Sure thing, gimme one sec.”

“How'd you guess?”

“You get a look,” he just says with a sharp smile, like he takes it personally that Clint is in pain.

By the time Clint has loaded up and is waiting for his next batch of pills to kick in, there's a knock on the door. Phil isn't alone when he enters, though – Natasha is with him. It's the first time Clint's seen her since they came back, even if it's only been a day. Her hair is red again, and she looks worried – or a worried kind of blank, a face she projects when she doesn't want anyone (but Phil and Clint) to see what she's thinking.

“Barton,” Phil says with a smile, but it doesn't reach his eyes and that's worrying. “How are you feeling?”

“Gotta pee and my leg's killing me, but other than that I'm very comfy,” Clint says. Steve huffs a laugh against his shoulder. Clint wants to drag Phil down into a hug – he never got one on the Quinjet back, and he's missed Phil as much as he's missed his Alphas – but Phil called him 'Barton', which means they're at work, even in their own living room. So no hug yet.

“Want help to get to the bathroom?” Natasha asks him, which is so atypical for her that Clint would stumble if he wasn't already sitting down. She doesn't do or say anything else, but for them, this is as good as Natasha holding up a huge sign saying _I NEED TO TALK TO YOU IN PRIVATE RIGHT THE FUCK NOW_.

“Yeah, sure,” Clint says easily, and she hands him his crutches when he fumbles upright.

“I'll give them the brief of your mission while you're gone,” Phil says, which is a relief. Clint doesn't like keeping secrets from his Alphas, even when they're of the classified kind.

“Yeah, thanks.” Clint hobbles into the bathroom with Natasha staying by his side, even though it's not necessary.

The second she shuts the bathroom door behind them, Clint says: “JARVIS? Privacy mode.”

“Very well, Agent Barton,” JARVIS says.

“What's wrong?”

Natasha leans forward and- sort of wraps him in a hug, but not really. Clint starts to hug her back, until he realizes she's not so much holding onto him as she's pressing her nose against his neck. Sniffing him.

“Are you- Tasha, what's going on?”

She leans back and takes something out of her pocket. “I need you to do something. Take this.” She pushes it – a small box – into his hand.

Clint frowns and looks down at it. “Tasha,” he says slowly, as something like panic starts to crawl up his throat, “did you just hand me a pregnancy test?”

“Two,” Natasha says. “Take them at the same time, to be certain.”

“But I'm not pregnant. This is just that thing,” Clint says. He doesn't realise his knees are about to give out until she sits him down on the toilet lid. “I'm not, I'm not pregnant.”

“Do you know?” she says, and her face is so, so blank.

“I-”

“Do you _know_?”

Clint's jaw snaps shut. He thinks back, and yeah, he knows. Sort of. Doesn't he? “But I've been on the pill,” he says and his voice is shaking. “The whole time, I was on the pill and then I l-”

- _left_ , he's about to say, until he remembers the night before he went after Tasha. After Steve had gone to bed, still healing, still wheelchair-bound, and he and Tony- he and Tony-

“Oh God,” Clint whispers. “But. It was only once! And only a couple days after! I can't be, that's not how-”

“Clint,” Natasha says, and her voice is so strong and calm and lovely. She rests her forehead against his. “Just take. The tests. Okay? For me.”

It feels like he's about to cry, but he nods and closes his eyes and sucks in sharp breath after sharp breath, until it stops feeling like his heart is beating out of his chest. “Okay,” he whispers. “Okay. It might not be. It might not be.”

“And if it is,” Natasha says and puts a hand on his cheek when she leans back, “you said you're off the pill.”

“Yeah, we were- we were gonna start trying. Later.”

“So it's not so bad timing.” She smiles a little, like she thinks this is a good thing, and that makes him feel a ton lighter all at once.

“No,” he says and manages to half-grimace, half-smile back. “It's not so bad either way.”

“I'll wait outside.” She leaves him there, leaves him to stare at the small box in his hands until he feels like he can maneuver his limbs around again.

Pissing while standing up is already kind of impossible with a busted leg, and when he has to piss on a couple of tiny sticks at the same time? That takes more coordination than he's got right now. So Clint sits down on the toilet, lid up, and awkwardly shifts around until he can get a hand in place. He's glad Tasha left him alone – this is embarrassing even in privacy mode – and once he's done, Clint moves over to the sink to wash his hands.

He freezes there, as he's drying his hands, and just- clutches the towel while the seconds tick by in his head. Until he knows it's time.

Last time it happened, six months ago now, Clint never even looked at the tests. He refused, like a coward, and stood huddled in the corner of this same bathroom with Steve while Tony checked for him. He remembers the different emotions that passed over Tony's face when he looked down at the tiny screen – the relief that had almost instantly been replaced with disappointment. Clint had known, before Tony had said a word, and it had taken him weeks to untangle his own emotions.

It's a similar feeling now, hobbling over to the sink, clutching his crutches hard enough that his hands start to ache. Because this isn't- if it is, if he _is_ , then this isn't the plan. They're gonna start trying soon, yeah, but soon doesn't mean _now_. It's like... in a way, he started trying without Steve and Tony's consent, which is a horrifying thought. He didn't _mean_ to, he wasn't even thinking about it when he and Tony last had sex, that he wasn't on the pill anymore. It never occurred to him to tell them, it was just a private little ritual he'd done for himself, which is one of the stupidest fucking things he's ever done now that he's thinking about it.

Clint takes a deep breath and looks down at the tests. Their screens are identical, tiny and poorly lit up, non-dramatically showing a single 'P'.

It takes a moment for his brain to kick into gear. Positive.

_Positive._

“Oh my God,” Clint croaks.

~*~

He spends a minute or two sitting awkwardly on the floor, staring at nothing with an empty mind. Slowly, slowly, thoughts start trickling in. They don't make sense, for the most part – there's something about car seats for babies and walkie-talkies in the bedroom, and then he's thinking about vomiting, and then he kind of _wants_ to vomit just so he has something else to focus on, and for a while it's hard to breathe.

But eventually, it gets easier. Eventually, there's a part of Clint that realizes the facts of the situation and starts to accept it.

He's pregnant. That's a thing now. He's pregnant. He must be seven weeks along, that's not too bad, although he probably would've realized earlier if it weren't for his past pseudocyesis.

It's not great timing. He's got his bum leg, he only got back, there's still the assassin to deal with, and Steve and Tony don't know. It's gonna be a shock for them. It's gonna be a major change in their lives.

But... it's gonna be okay. Probably. Right? They love each other, Clint loves them, so much, and they talked about this. It's not like it's gonna come completely out of the blue, it's just _sooner_. Tony will probably freak, and Clint is _currently_ freaking, but Steve... Steve will be calm. Steve will probably be ecstatic once he's had time to adjust, and even before then, he'll probably be busy calming Tony and Clint down. Steve is their rock; Clint doesn't think anything can knock him off-balance for very long. Hell, not even his own temporary death did that.

Clint breathes, in and out, in and out, and gathers himself up from the floor. His foot twinges painfully, but he ignores it – his whole body seems a little numb, now that all his processing power is being used on this new thing.

“We'll be okay,” Clint says out loud, because he needs to hear it. Needs to believe it. “We'll be fine.” After wrapping the pregnancy tests in a wad of paper, he tosses them in the trash can under the sink.

He opens the door to find Natasha looking back at him. He can't find his voice, so he just nods once. She exhales slowly, but there's a tiny smile on her lips that makes his heart soar.

“ _Don't tell yet,_ ” he murmurs in Russian – he needs to be the one to tell them, and he wants them to tell the others in his life too. Phil, oh my God, Phil will be so happy for them.

She nods at that, but when they start hobbling back to the living room, she keeps a hand on his arm and squeezes it comfortingly.

It's hard to keep the reluctant smile off his face, but Clint isn't a level seven agent for nothing, so once they're back in the living room, he knows only Tasha can tell that something's up.

“You okay?” Tony says from the couch, where he's sat down next to Steve. “You took forever in there.”

“Yeah, I'm, y'know. Stomach stuff,” Clint says vaguely. The unintended pun makes him want to snort, but he just quirks a smile. “Should get the doc to adjust my meds, I think.”

Phil is still standing, and his hands are clenched behind his back. He looks grave, and that makes Clint remember to focus on the situation at hand. He sits down at the end of the couch, next to Tony, and looks up at his handler and boyfriend.

“Where you at, sir?”

“I told them you and Romanoff were able to retrieve the assassin alive and relatively unharmed,” Phil says. “At the time, Romanoff could also provide us with a code name.”

“The Winter Soldier,” Tony says and sends Clint an impressed look. “How the hell you managed that, I'll never get.”

“Yeah,” Clint says. “It was...” _easier than I thought it would be._ He doesn't ask Phil about it, not right now; about how this can be the Winter Soldier from the myths when the guy looks barely twenty.

Phil sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose.

“Coulson?” Clint says, starting to get worried. Phil looks like he's bringing terrible news, and Clint really doesn't want that. Not today. Today is a day for good news.

“Over the past day, SHIELD has tried to verify the Winter Soldier's identity beyond the code name. The DNA results came in only an hour ago.”

“You know who he is?” Clint says, baffled. Natasha looks as surprised as him, although she hides it better. Tony and Steve look more excited than shocked.

“Nice work!” Tony remarks. “But then, what's with the doom-and-gloom face?”

“He's been identified as an American citizen,” Phil says, “a soldier believed missing in action for... many years.” He pulls out a handful of photographs from the inner pocket of his suit. “I thought I'd let you see for yourself,” he says quietly, although Clint can't tell who he's speaking to in particular.

As soon as the photographs land on the coffee table, Tony snatches one. Clint doesn't need one close to see that they're recent, taken from whatever interrogation room SHIELD must be holding him in right now. Steve picks up a photo and frowns at it.

“Hey,” Tony says slowly, with a look dawning on his face that Clint doesn't like. “This looks like...”

He trails off, and Clint is about to nudge him for a clarification – the guy _does_ look familiar, in a way Clint can't pinpoint, and that's annoyed him to no end since he first saw the guy without that mask on – but a spluttering noise from Steve stops him.

Steve is _white_. He looks like he's about to faint, or like he's seen a ghost, or maybe both at once. He's clutching the photograph so hard it's tearing. “It's Bucky,” he says.

That sentence doesn't even make sense at first. “What?” Clint says.

In front of them, Phil looks sympathetic and sad, but not surprised. He doesn't nod, but he doesn't need to.

“That's Bucky,” Steve says again, just as loud and strangled and disbelieving. “It's _Bucky_.”

~*~


	7. Steve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You sure smell a lot,” the kid drawls, “for such a tiny fella.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *whisper* hiiii
> 
> These next chapters are gonna be pretty different from the past ones. Specifically, they will change POV each chapter (hence chapter titles), and jump between the present and the past. I hope that will become increasingly clear and easy-to-read as it goes along.  
> These chapters will be shorter, but hopefully updated more often, because of the change. Also, I am screwing with canon and timelines left and right here, so be prepared for things happening differently than in the original work. :)

_“You sure smell a lot,” the kid drawls, “for such a tiny fella.”_

_“That a problem?” Steve says and stands as straight as he knows, even though the other guy's got a whole foot on him. It hurts his back and his bruised shoulder, but he scowls and don't grimace; there's still blood dripping onto his white shirt from his busted lip, and his Ma will cuss him out with worried eyes when he comes home._

_Even so, he's standing, and the other Alphas have long run off. Steve could probably take this guy too, if he gives lip._

_“It look like it's a problem?” the kid says, still slouched against the brick wall. “I was gonna help out, be a good Samaritan, but you looked like you could hold your own.”_

_“I can,” Steve bites out. He pushes his scent at the boy, to make a point or to make him go away._

_The kid coughs and whistles, impressed. “Jeez, no need to stink up the place. You're Alpha, I get it.”_

_“And you?”_

_“Same.”_

_There's a lingering scent in the air now, mixing with Steve's. It's brash and sharp in his nostrils, but not cloying. Like fresh bread from the bakery and asthma cigarettes, both at the same time, and – yeah, definitely Alpha. Steve grimaces without meaning to._

_“Bucky,” the kid says and looks amused and cool and comfortable in his own skin like Steve never is. “That's me.”_

_Steve finally sits down. His lip throbs now, and his cheek's swelling up good. He should stay out a while longer, wait for the swelling to pass before Ma sees him. His chest rattles and clanks like always. He pushes a hand against his ribs and winces at the bruises starting up there._

_“I'm Steve,” he says, finally._

_“Nice to meet'cha, Stevie,” Bucky says and sits down next to him._

~*~

The man in the pictures isn't Bucky. Oh, it's Bucky's _face_ , alright; same cheekbones, same sharp jaw, same mouth that always threatened to split into an insolent grin. But those features have been smoothed out by something, obscured by long, matted hair, and the eyes-

Those are not Bucky's eyes. Those aren't _anyone's_ eyes, no one living, breathing, thriving. Those eyes belong to a robot, an empty husk.

His brain stutters around that. He's never gotten used to Bucky being dead and gone; he's just had to accept it as part of his life, just like this new world around him. Somehow, the thought of Bucky being _empty_ , of – in a sense – being both alive _and_ dead at the same time – makes Steve's chest constrict. It hurts to breathe. His body hurts like it hasn't done since before it got altered almost past recognition. _Just like Bucky's been altered_ , a voice whispers in his mind, and it sounds like the Red Skull.

“How is this even, what,” Tony's voice comes from somewhere behind him. Tony sounds as faint as Steve feels.

It's getting harder to breathe. It's like there are extra layers between his lungs and ribs, matter sneaking in and filling the cavity, until there isn't any space for his lungs to expand. He's... is he having an asthma attack?

His lips are numb, his shoulders working too hard. It feels like an asthma attack, feels like his body conspiring against him just like before. He knows that isn't true. There's no more asthma, hasn't been for seventy years. So he gulps down air, tries to picture the air flow in his mind – just like his ma told him – and stays in the now.

The man wearing Bucky's face stares at him through the photograph.

Steve realizes eventually that Phil has been speaking for a while. Explaining, in that calm, crisp voice of his, how the man wearing Bucky's face is actually Bucky. Or was Bucky, at some point, before the Red Room got him.

Natasha's people.

He wonders, dimly, whether there's someone out in the world right now that could look at a photograph of Natasha and see someone else staring back at them.

“Thought he looked familiar,” Clint says. He's sat down next to Steve at some point; Steve didn't even notice.

“Take me to him,” someone says. Probably Steve. The photograph is getting smudged from how hard he holds it.

“I'm sorry, Captain,” Phil says and lists a number of reasons why he can't take Steve to the man wearing Bucky's face. Steve doesn't care about any of them.

“If you don't take me to him,” he says again, sure that it's him speaking now, “I'll just break in. Sir.” The photograph is ripped in half. How did that happen?

Clint plucks the fragments out of his hand without looking at them. Just looks at Steve, blank like he's playing poker. Waiting for Steve to go off like a bomb, maybe.

Phil pinches the bridge of his nose. “I thought you might say that.”

~*~

_Bucky smokes. Not much, Steve figures he can barely afford to buy them off whoever he knows old enough to buy, but he smokes a little. Enough that he's infamous in the neighborhood already, fifteen and Alpha and lookin' ready to take on the world._

_Bucky is tall, a little muscly, with dark hair and eyes that look dangerous unless he's smiling. Classic bad boy, except Steve's pretty sure Bucky's done nothing real bad all his life._

_Bucky's charming, especially when there's dames about, great at track and field, and can smoke a whole cig without gasping for breath. He's everything Steve's not, but he hangs about Steve's apartment like they're pals. Like they're_ old _pals, even though it's only been a week since Bucky first slouched into Steve's life._

_“You want one?” Bucky asks and flicks his cigarette towards him. It's getting colder, another chest-squeezing winter approaching, and Steve shakes his head._

_“Can't,” he says, watching the glowing tip. “I got asthma. Need special ones.”_

_Bucky blinks, his give-a-fuck face cracking into a worried frown. “For real? You never told.”_

_“You've known me for a week.”_

_Bucky huffs, like he's indignant, and drops his cigarette on the ground. “Yeah, but still. Should'a told, Stevie, I ain't gonna smoke if you can't.” He crushes it under his shoe._

_“No, feel free, really,” Steve says, already feeling guilty about Bucky wasting half a cig on him._

_Bucky ignores him, just whistles appreciatively after a dame that walks past. She's old, older than them by ten years easy, and sends Bucky an unimpressed glare before she walks on. Her shoes – high, scruffy – clacks angrily against the concrete._

_“Shame,” Bucky says._

_“Like you'd know what to do if she whistled back,” Steve says before he can shut his big mouth._

_But Bucky just laughs, hard and loud, head thrown back so Steve can see his Adam's apple bob. “Screw you, Rogers.”_

~*~

Steve doesn't remember getting to HQ. He doesn't remember Tony and Natasha going with him, either, but here they stand, flanking him like he could cut and run at any moment.

Steve can't guarantee that he won't.

“I understand, sir,” Phil is saying to his phone, in the voice he gets when he disagrees with an opinion but doesn't see the point in arguing. “I just thought you'd want to know.” The answer he gets, from Fury on the other side, makes the corners of his mouth twitch before he hangs up.

“Where is he?” Steve says.

“Below Five,” Natasha says.

Phil sends her a sharp look, but doesn't argue. “Come with me,” he says instead, and leads them into one of the glass elevators. There, he presses a combination of buttons that Steve is too distracted to memorize, and the elevator sinks smoothly into the ground.

It keeps going, and going, and going.

“How far down does this place go?” Tony asks, sharp and looking out at the darkness around them. Nobody answers him, and Steve feels the absence of Clint there with him. Clint must still be at the Tower, confined to the bed or the wheelchair. Steve places his palms against the chilled glass so he won't punch them out.

It's still hard to breathe. He's tempted to ask for an inhaler, if only for the relief a placebo effect will provide him.

The hallway outside is bright and metal-plated. This looks more like a bunker than a row of offices, and every door has two different complicated-looking scanners next to them. Phil leads them through, his steps sure on the concrete, and they only meet one scientist on the way. She looks at them, confused and a little alarmed before Phil gives her a small nod and she continues on her way, ducking her head as she passes them.

Everything is hard and loud.

They go through another three hallways before Phil finally leads them into a heavily guarded room. There are two guards posted on the outside, eyeing Steve and Natasha more than the others, and another two right inside the door.

“Captain,” Phil says in his Agent Coulson voice, and stops Steve before he can walk through the doorway. “I'm going to ask you to stay in this room and not do anything you are not ordered to. If you cannot comply with that, I will have you escorted away from the premises. Is that clear?”

It is. Steve isn't sure he cares, but he nods anyway. “Yes, sir,” he adds belatedly, when Phil doesn't move.

Phil nods and lets him pass.

It looks vaguely like an interrogation room. Computer terminals line one wall, and the wall opposite the door is made entirely out of what Steve reckons is one-way glass. It must be reinforced and jerry-rigged from here to eternity, but it looks deceptively frail, like Steve could just knock it down and walk into the room ahead.

The room Bucky's sitting in.

The man wearing Bucky's face sits on a cot by the wall, facing them. Or facing the glass that separates them, rather. The room around him is bare, except for a latrine in the corner, the aforementioned cot with an off-white mattress, pillow and blanket, and a single chair sat in the middle of the room. Everything except for the sheets look bolted down – even the man wearing Bucky's face. He sits, sock-clad feet planted on the floor like he couldn't move if he wanted to, one elbow braced against his knee.

He's wearing a threadbare SHIELD t-shirt, one that looks worn and comfortable, and Steve wonders who gave that to him. One of the sleeves hangs over an empty space where the other arm should be.

“You removed the metal arm?” Tony says from somewhere behind him. There are two SHIELD agents in here with them, watching Steve with cagey looks, but Steve ignores them and walks up to the glass.

“As much of it as possible,” Phil says.

The man wearing Bucky's face stares right in front of him. His hair is long and shaggy, but looks cleaner than in the photo, and he's clean-shaven. He doesn't try to hide his face, but keeps his chin lifted a fraction, some shard of rebellion that still remains. Or maybe his neck hurts. He looks tense enough that both seem feasible.

It's impossible to reconcile this man – this dead-eyed, one-armed, ghostly pale and gaunt man – with Steve's best friend who died thirty-seven months and seventy years ago. It's not him.

“It's not him,” Steve says out loud, and his voice is just as hollow as that man's eyes.

“No,” Phil says and meets him where he stands, close enough to touch the glass. “It's not. But it also is.”

Steve swallows down the wave of tears that want to burst out of him. He takes a step back instead of hauling himself against the glass. The man wearing Bucky's face doesn't move, doesn't shift his gaze; doesn't give any indication that there's a personality behind the empty mask.

“Steve?” Tony asks, and it's his soft voice, his _come to bed and we'll talk about it even though I hate talking_ voice, and for once, Steve can't stand it. He shakes his head.

When he finds his voice again, there's so much he has to ask about. What Bucky's said. What he's done since he came here. If there's any indication of what he remembers, if he remembers anything at all. But right now, it's all Steve can do to stand up straight, feet planted against the concrete, and try not to fall apart.

~*~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God, you guys. It's been almost a year. A YEAR. And somehow, you are still sending me hopeful (and polite!) comments, asking whether I am ever updating this story. You are so sweet and I'm so glad you're still around. I wouldn't blame you for leaving. SO. Here's a short summary of my life the last eight months:  
> \- Wrote my dissertation. Got it through. Got top marks and graduated, super proud. Yay me^^  
> \- Got a job-ish, am trying to wrangle real life outside academia. I'm only moderately successful at it.  
> \- Moved back home with my parents. Not too bad, actually.  
> \- Can i haz a girlfriend plz  
> \- Have not written a lick of fanfiction since April. Oops.
> 
> Thanks so much for sticking around, guys. Hopefully I'll be here for a while longer, too. <3


	8. Tony

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings for underage sex and substance abuse (in the past, but described in present tense). Also chapter warnings for past canonical character deaths. A fun chapter, in other words. :)

It reminds him of jail, really. It's a long time since Tony got locked up for more than just one night of sobering up, but it's not something you forget, being locked away like society itself wishes it could forget all about you. SHIELD might paint the walls fancier, have better computers by the walls – though not much better, this shit should've been thrown out before the new millennium – but the feel of it stays the same.

As far as prison cells go, the Winter Soldier's got a little more space than your average inmate. Not that he's taking advantage of it, at least not at the moment. He kind of looks like a broken android, from where Tony's standing, a few feet away from the double-glazed, reinforced glass. The Hulk could get through the glass pretty easily, and if Tony were in the suit, he might be able to do some damage, but without that shiny arm of his, the Winter Soldier doesn't stand a chance of getting out of here.

He's not trying to get out, either. He's not really doing anything. Tony wonders if he's got a stand-by mode, if that's what's making him so still. Clinging to his assassin-ness out of necessity, or out of force.

Tony stares at the Winter Soldier, partly out of morbid curiosity, but mostly so he won't have to stare at Steve. Tony's seen pictures, of tiny little pre-serum Rogers from Brooklyn, and the Steve in front of him right now is strikingly similar. Same hunched form, same thin face – like Steve's lost forty pounds in the last half hour alone. It's painful to watch, hurts Tony somewhere in the sternum where he doesn't want to look too closely.

Steve's shoulders hitch, like he's holding back a shout. Or tears, maybe. Tony still isn't looking.

He counts the minutes. The two SHIELD agents have gone back to monitoring the Winter Soldier's vitals, and Phil is doing his chameleon thing, standing next to Steve and doing so much nothing that Tony sometimes forgets he's there. Steve's busy breaking into tiny little pieces, Natasha's so clamped up Tony can barely tell what her name is, and Tony is just fucking useless where he stands.

He should be home with Clint. At least then he could be useless in a couch or something.

~*~

_“You have the fucking nicest tits I've ever seen.”_

_Nelly lifts her head just enough to leer at him. There's smudged makeup all around her eyes. “How old are you even?”_

_“Old enough,” Tony lies easily. The sheets are sticky underneath him, stinking of tequila, and he's still feeling the after-buzz of a few good lines of coke. The sunlight's a killer, but Nelly's fucking gorgeous and only twenty, and he always gets horny in mornings like these._

_“You don't look old enough,” Nelly says, but she stays where she is, curled up against Hank, who's still sleeping. She's naked underneath the sheet and doesn't seem worried about it slipping down, just smirky and full of glee and champagne. Not even touching the edge of a hangover._

_Tony makes his way over, nearly slips on the sticky sheet. There's semen here as well, he knows the smell of it; Alpha, strong and heady and a little gross, not him and not Hank. Someone who's gone. He doesn't remember._

_“How come you're so fucking gorgeous?” Tony asks. It's a bad line, but he's only got bad lines, and not much to lose at this point. His tongue tastes like Alpha. Did he blow someone last night?_

_Probably._

_Nelly laughs, soft and languid, and stretches. The sheet falls off her breasts, dark nipples peaking as she watches him stare. “That's a terrible line,” she says._

_He puts a hand on her inner thigh, not too far up but pretty far. She smells sweet for a Beta, almost flowery, and he's kind of expecting to be slapped away but he isn't. He can taste the sunlight._

_“You gonna fuck me right here?” Nelly asks, and it sounds like a challenge and an invitation._

_“Am I?” The closer he gets, the sweeter she smells. It could be cloying, but it isn't; it's just like grabbing a handful of honey and licking it. So he does; he licks right where the line of her underwear would be if she wore any, and Nelly sighs into it and grabs his hair._

_Hank wakes up gradually beside them, squinting at Tony like a grumpy cat. “Stark? The hell you doing here?”_

_“Fucking your girlfriend,” Tony says, even though he's technically going down on her, and Nelly's laugh is so loud he can see shards of music in the air._

_“You little shit,” Hank says, but there's no real heat, and he ends up mostly staring at them instead. He cups his girlfriend's breasts and kind of strokes Tony's back. “So. We gonna fuck, or?”_

_“I don't fuck Alpha dudes, man,” Tony says and slips two fingers inside of Nelly, who makes an appreciative noise. “That's gay.”_

~*~

“Can I see him?” Steve says eventually, in the same, little voice he once asked if Tony wanted to break their bond.

“Not at this moment, unfortunately,” Phil says. “I'm sorry, Captain.”

Tony watches Phil put a hand on Steve's shoulder and squeeze. Tony doesn't fiddle, he doesn't even move.

“When, then?” Steve asks. There's steel in there, now. Enough that everyone here knows he isn't gonna just let it go, leave the Winter Soldier here.

“Give it time,” Phil says, and it sounds like a promise.

Tony doesn't understand why it also sounds kind of like a death sentence.

~*~

_“You didn't,” Rico says._

_“Did,” Tony says and reaches over to snag Rico's apple. Rico always grabs his gummy bears anyway, it's only fair._

_“You're a fucking liar, Stark,” Rico says and beheads a gummy bear._

_“Swear on my degree,” Tony says. “Hank was there, even. Watching.” He grins, even though it feels kinda hollow. His head hurts, but it always hurts._

_“You're so full of shit,” Rico says, but he sounds awed. Impressed as fuck. Rico talks about pussy constantly, but Tony's pretty sure he's never knotted anyone in his life. Three years Tony's senior, and Tony's been dick deep in half the Omega and Beta girls here._

_There've been some Alphas dick deep in him too, of course – at least throat-wise – but that's not something he's keen on advertising. Don't wanna get branded a fag at MIT now that people are finally starting to take him seriously, not just calling him the Stark golden boy._

_“So how was it, then?” Rico says and tosses a gummy bear at Tony's face._

_Tony yanks himself out of his thoughts and starts describing Nelly's pussy, because she didn't ask him to keep her a secret. And to be honest, it **was** a great pussy. It deserves recognition._

_There's an itch deep under his skin, familiar, clinging. He's not gonna take anything now, not until Friday. Gotta keep sharp when he's finalising his project, days until deadline time steadily ticking away._

_The world's first real AI. Tony almost gets horny just thinking about it; but then again, he's pushing seventeen. A whiff of ripe Omega is usually enough to get him going, never mind the thought of fresh, newly discovered technology._

_Rico's laughing his skinny ass off, trying to play it cool even though his scent spikes hopefully – like he thinks Tony's just gonna go ahead and bang him now too, which, nice try – when the air in the cafeteria changes._

_Tony turns around to where it's quieted the most. Two beefy bodyguards – pretty obvious, what with the sunglasses and the black suits – flanking a really familiar figure._

_“Hey,” Rico says, frowning, when Tony cuts off mid-sentence and rises to his feet. “Hey, what's up?”_

_“I'll get back to you on that,” Tony says faintly, already walking across the room. He can feel people watching him, but all he can really focus on is the ominous feeling uncurling in his chest, and the tight expression Jarvis gets when he sees him._

_“Sir,” Jarvis says, and he doesn't say anything else, but he puts his hand on Tony's shoulder and Tony just **knows**._

~*~

“Would you like a chair, Captain?” Phil says. His tone is a little too cautious to be neutral, and Tony wants to leave.

Steve shifts, like he'd forgotten that they were all here. Like his whole world is the Winter Soldier hunched on that uncomfortable-looking bed. Maybe it is.

Tony wants to _leave_.

“I would like,” Steve says, his voice gathering strength with each word, “an access code to this floor, and this room, effective from tomorrow. If I can't visit him so he can see me, I can stay here until you let me.”

“Captain,” Phil says, but Tony can tell he's already caving. Tony gets it. It's virtually impossible to deny Steve what he wants, especially because he so rarely asks for anything at all.

“No, I'm serious, Coulson.” When Steve turns enough that Tony can see his profile, his jaw is clenched in a Freedom Reigns expression. “Unless I know that I can get back in here, I will not leave this room. It's-” and that's the first time his voice cracks, the first time in a while that Steve even seems human. “It's Bucky,” Steve says and turns back to the glass, so Tony can't see his face anymore. “He's my best friend. The least I can do is- be here.”

It shouldn't hurt. Tony doesn't know why it hurts.

Phil glances at Tony. His neutral-face gets neutral-ier, which is generally a bad sign. “I will arrange it. I promise, Captain.”

Steve's smile, when he directs it at Phil, feels a bit like when Tony accidentally blow-torched his hand four months ago – except all over his insides. “Thank you, Coulson.”

“I'm heading back,” Tony says and leaves.

~*~

_“All the papers are in order, Sir,” Jarvis says. He looks older than he used to, even though it's only been a few days since the funeral. “I'm sure the University Board will understand-”_

_“No,” Tony says. “I'm going back tonight.” He's already lost too many hours of work over this past week. The competition is in three days, and while he was doing okay for time before- before, now he doesn't even know if he'll be able to finish the AI in time. Maybe it won't even function as a proper robot, a smart one._

_Maybe it'll be a dummy, like its creator._

_“Sir,” Jarvis says and comes into the room. He steps neatly over the strewn clothes that are piled everywhere, barely glances at the open suitcases that Tony is throwing his shit into. “There is nothing wrong with grieving. It is completely normal, and profoundly human.” His hands are wrinkled with blue veins._

_Tony wonders when Jarvis will die._

_“I don't want to be normal,” Tony says and tries to make is sound like a joke, but his voice cracks. It feels like all of him is haphazardly put together with duct tape. “I've never been normal.”_

_He won't give his stupid robot feelings. Not proper ones. It will never have to know grief, because it sucks. It super sucks and everything here smells like Mom and the last thing he shouted at Howard two months ago was_ I wish you weren't my dad _and look, Tony got his wish like usual._

_Jarvis puts a hand on Tony's shoulder. Strong, steady grip. That means he probably won't die just yet, Tony thinks with way too much childish hope. He's seventeen and three weeks, and he's been playing at adulthood for half his life._

_He's fine._

_“I miss them terribly,” Jarvis says. His voice is scratchy and his eyes are wet, but he smiles like he doesn't blame Tony one bit, like it's fine that Tony didn't cry during the funeral and refused to give his parents a last speech._

_Obie was better at that. Obie_ had _been better; the speech was beautiful. Tony can't use his words like that, not like Howard used to. He can only use them as barbs, as painful little pinpricks, or to fling attention in the wrong direction._

_“I hate this,” Tony says with a voice that isn't a voice at all. “I hate everything and my robot is stupid, I hate it.”_

_Jarvis laughs a little, like those words made sense, and draws him into a hug. Stark men never hug, but there are no more Stark men left, just Tony, so he lets himself be held by Jarvis until his eyes stop stinging._

~*~


	9. Clint

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay this time, guys. I've been the bed-ridden kind of ill for a week now, so nothing of anything has gotten done. Have some Clint headspace for your patience - though if it's good headspace... well.
> 
> Chapter warnings: Off-screen rape of a young character. Implied abuse of children. Other bad things. They are all in the past, but heed anyway.

Even if he was questioned under torture, Clint wouldn't admit to having spent these last three hours curled around a pillow on the couch. It's unprofessional. It's borderline pathetic, really, though he could probably blame that on the pregnancy if he wanted to.

His mind skips over that thought again, like a broken record. He's growing a tiny person. Inside himself. Just like that.

He clutches the pillow harder.

Natasha comes home first, long before his Alphas. She walks straight through the door, doesn't knock, and JARVIS lets her. Clint just watches her from where he's sitting, doing his best impression of a lump, with his cast leg sticking out awkwardly in front of him.

“It's him,” she says and sits down in his personal space, careful not to jostle his leg. “Steve confirmed it.” She stares at him, but softly, at least for Natasha. She doesn't do anything else, just stares, because they both know he'll start talking before she needs to ask.

“I don't know what to do,” Clint says. His voice is a teeny, tiny thing.

Natasha reaches out and pushes a hand through his hair, providing him with a familiar touch without her having to compromise her own personal space for his sake. “It's not the end of the world,” she says, matter-of-factly.

It's funny, Clint thinks, because she knows this for a fact. They all do.

“How is Steve taking it?” He asks instead of thinking about the timing of his – _thing_ – has just gotten so unbelievably much worse.

“Not well. When will you tell them?” Natasha never shies away from anything, and she rarely lets Clint do the same.

“Never? Is never an option?”

Natasha makes a slight purse of her mouth.

“Alright, alright,” Clint concedes. He pushes a hand through his own hair, because Natasha stopped and he needs to feel like he's being cuddled. He wishes Steve was here to hug him – except he wouldn't, Clint realizes, because Steve is in a similar state of shock that Clint is.

“I need to wait,” Clint says. “At least until I know if... if I should keep it.” Calling his baby – or the cluster of cells inside him that will someday _turn into_ a baby – an 'it' makes him feel dirty all over.

Natasha has a thing where it seems like her eyelashes is twice as long as usual. It makes her look double as judgmental.

“Don't,” Clint says and hides behind his pillow. He's not equipped to deal with this. Hell, he's barely equipped to deal with a baby on its own. Add the long-thought-dead best friend of his Alpha to the mix, having come back as an assassin... “I think my life is a bad Hallmark movie,” Clint says.

“Then you know it will end happily,” Natasha says, which is hands down the most romantic thing Clint has ever heard her say.

~*~

_“Shut the fuck up,” Barney hisses as he gives Clint the last push. “You're gonna wake him.”_

_Clint scrambles over the garden fence, just barely, but there's nothing to grab onto on the other side and he lands on his face, hard. It hurts. He can't help that he starts to cry._

_“Fuck. Clint, hey,” Barney says and is suddenly there, gathering him up and giving him an awkward hug. “It's okay, it's just a boo-boo.”_

_Clint is too old for boo-boos. He's nearly eight. But his face really hurts and they're not just running from Dad, they're running from Mom too, and he's not so sure about any of this. “Wanna go home,” he says into Barney's shirt, even though they're just outside the garden._

_“Shh, I know,” Barney says and pats him on the back a little too hard. “We can't, you know we talked about this. Come on, up you go.”_

_Clint doesn't wanna up you go. But he does, because Barney's older and smarter and smells like chamomile tea, and eventually, Clint stops crying._

_“We going to the circus?” he says, hopeful._

_“Hell yeah, bro,” Barney says. “I'mma be a strong man, and you can be the bearded lady.”_

_“I'm not a bearded lady,” Clint says, grimacing._

_Barney laughs at that, although Clint doesn't know what's so funny._

~*~

“It will be fine,” Natasha says, right before Tony comes back.

Clint doesn't have the time – or the voice – to reply, but he sends her a look he hopes is grateful. Then he shoves the pillow behind his back, so it won't look like he's been using it as a teddy bear.

Tony looks... wow, Tony looks awful. Worn down and blank-faced, the way he gets when they've failed a mission – or succeeded, but with heavier casualties than anticipated.

“That bad?” Clint says.

“Worse,” Tony says, but doesn't elaborate. “I'm gonna change. Got a lot of work to catch up on.” He sends Clint a brittle smile that doesn't reach his eyes, and disappears into the bedroom.

Once, when he was eleven, Barney dared him to drink a mug full of vinegar. Clint gets that same feel now, as Tony walks away; like his insides are shrivelling up a bit.

“It will be fine,” he says out loud, but he doesn't have Natasha's confidence.

Judging by her look, he doesn't convince her either.

~*~

_“Smellin good tonight, little Barton.”_

_Laughter and more laughter. Clint lies on his side, mostly covered by the too-thin blanket, and he pretends so hard to be asleep that he almost fools himself._

_“Smell too good for your ugly mug, Tyler,” Barney snarls back, and Clint can hear how scared he is. That makes Clint even more scared._

_“That so?” Tyler laughs. The other three boys laugh too, all ground workers at the circus. None of them has talent for anything more, says Barney. Clint doesn't ask why Barney's a ground worker as well. Whether Barney has talent for anything more – whether Clint will, when he's old enough to do something other than shovel muck._

_Clint wishes Layna the Snake Woman still had room for the both of them in her tent. She's a sweet Beta lady, smells a little like Mom used to, before Dad got back out of prison. But after she met Davina, the other cot is occupied._

_“I don't take up much space, but still,” Layna said apologetically when Clint and Barney had to leave. Now, they sleep with the rest of the ground boys, who won't leave Barney alone._

_There's scuffling noises behind Clint now. Then a soft slap, a sound Clint knows well: a fist hitting a cheek. Barney groans in pain and the others laughs._

_“Who's an ugly mug now, Barton?” Tyler says._

_“Still you,” Barney replies, and Clint bites his lip so hard it hurts. There's more soft, wet hitting sounds. Barney whimpers and curses._

_“Be quiet, bitch,” Tyler says in that whispering hiss that makes Clint's heart beat so much faster. “Don't wanna wake up mini Barton, eh?”_

_Clint is awake. Clint is always awake when this happens, and some day he will spin out of bed and attack all of them, hit and kick and bite until they're all bleeding out on the floor. Barney will get up from the ground and he'll be fine, and he'll look at Clint with gratitude and smile and say “knew you'd get them, Clint.”_

_Some day when he's bigger. When his heart isn't beating so fast that he gets dizzy. When he's become an Alpha, like Dad._

_“I'm quiet, I'm fucking quiet,” Barney says. He gasps in pain from something Clint can't see, doesn't want to see._

_“Lie still,” Tyler says, and the others catcall. They don't seem worried about Clint waking up, because they're hardly quiet at all._

_“Don't- I'm fucking sorry I bit, okay, just leave me alone,” Barney says._

_“Wanna be left alone, shouldn't have smelled so fucking good, then, bitch.”_

_Clint concentrates even harder on sleeping when the grunting noises start. In his head, he's ripping Tyler's arms off and beating everyone to death with them. He can feel dumb tears slip down his nose and he doesn't sniffle, because then they'll know he's awake._

_Barney comes to bed after. Their eyes meet when he slips under the shared blanket, and Clint sees the careful way Barney holds himself, the bruises around his mouth._

_He doesn't say anything. He can see that Barney hates him._

~*~

Natasha leaves before Tony gets back from the bedroom. She doesn't do platitudes, but she does squeeze his hand – too hard to be pure comfort, but Clint still appreciates it. Clint can feel nausea rummage around his stomach, but he doesn't know if it's the situation or... his _situation_.

When Tony comes back from the bedroom, he's put on one of his wife beaters that have too many oil stains to ever get out. It's typical work wear, the kind of work that means he won't be back until morning. Or early afternoon. Or late enough that JARVIS has to lock Tony out of the system and alert Clint and Steve, because it's been forty hours since he last got any sleep.

“You okay?” Clint says. His stomach's getting worse, wobblier. It might not just be nerves, which is just... perfect.

“Yeah, peachy,” Tony says. “I'll see you later.” His voice is that type of distracted that means he's caught deep inside his head, and Clint knows there isn't much that can get him out of it.

“Yeah,” Clint says. “See ya.”

The door closes smoothly behind his Alpha. Clint sits still, doesn't turn the TV on, and feels how the floor of his belly slowly moves up into his throat. He manages to get his way to the bathroom on his own, crutches and all. It's harder to throw up like this, with his leg aching and in a cast, but Clint's always been adaptable.

He deals.

~*~

_He likes Trick Shot's bow. Clint's tried making one of his own, but it turned out wonky and it's almost impossible to make the arrow go straight. Trick Shot saw him use it once and laughed, but after that, he's let Clint borrow his bow more often._

_He says Clint's got a talent for it._

_“Piss poor shot,” Trick Shot says, but sounds amused._

_“I hit the target,” Clint says, a little annoyed. It's a lot harder to fire the bow when he has to stand on one leg – he keeps getting little dizzy spells, like he hasn't eaten enough. He might have a fever; he's been warm all day, sweating and needing fresh air every hour or so. Barney finally told him to go help someone else out; “you fucking reek, Clint.”_

_Clint tries again. The arrow pierces the third tier from the center. Not good enough._

_“Tsk,” Trick Shot says, before he scrunches up his nose. “The hell is that smell? Did Boulder try making grub on the stove again?”_

_Clint turns around and sniffs the air. “I don't smell anything.”_

_Trick Shot gets closer, mouth turning into a sharp line. “No wonder. You're the one who stinks, kid.”_

_“Huh? Bullshit,” Clint says and takes a whiff under his armpit. Nothing out of the ordinary. The world tilts a little again, like he's sick. “It's nothing, I just caught something, is all.”_

_Trick Shot laughs. “I'll say. Caught the chance to get preggers, more like.”_

_Clint freezes. “What?”_

_Trick Shot's bow suddenly feels slippery in his hands. When Clint takes stock of his body, really checks to see what's going on, he feels the current of fever going up his pine from the pit of his stomach. He feels the slow burn in his chest, and, oddly enough, how sensitive his nipples feel against the rough cotton of his shirt._

_“Fuck,” Clint says and puts the bow down, hands shaking. “I can't- I'm supposed to be_ Alpha _, Trick.”_

_Trick Shot grins. “Like that useless lug of your brother's an Alpha?”_

__No, _Clint doesn't say._ That's the whole point. I'm the one who's supposed to save us. __

_“Hey, kid,” Trick Shot says and claps him roughly on the back. “It's not a big deal. I'll talk to Layna, hear if you can crash with Davina while you go through your first heat.”_

_Davina's safe. She's Omega, but she's so scary with those psychic powers of hers that most of the Alphas here don't even dare to_ look _at her – or her girlfriend, for that matter. Davina will take care of Clint, just like Mom stayed home with Barney and held him through his own first heat._

_“Trick?” Clint says, and he sounds like a five-year old, not fourteen at all._

_“Yeah, kid?”_

_“Can you tell Barney for me?”_

_It's not often Trick Shot sounds sympathetic about anything, but he does so now. “Sure thing.”_

~*~

The thing about throwing up is that it doesn't help the nausea. The nausea keeps building, and then you smell your own vomit, and then it erupts again and becomes an endless fucking cycle of turning your body inside out. Clint clutches the toilet rim and tries not to think about how familiar, in a way, this is to going into heat. Losing control of your body, the smell of you everywhere, mostly scaring people off. The shaking, the shivers, the need to be comforted and held close by someone, anyone who doesn't smell like a threat.

“Agent Barton?” JARVIS says, and, after an almost human pause; “Clint?”

“Yeah,” Clint groans and tastes bright porcelain against his lips. He wishes he'd thought to turn off the light in here.

“Should I call Sir?”

Clint shakes his head, waits to speak until the newest wave of stomach cramps has come and gone. “He's busy.”

“I'm sure-” JARVIS begins, but Clint interrupts him.

“Jay, can you keep a secret?”

Another pause. “Certainly, Clint.”

“No, I mean, can you _physically_ keep Tony from accessing all of your data if I tell you something I don't want him to know?”

This time the pause is longer. “There are security systems in place to prevent a security breach,” JARVIS says, and doesn't elaborate more than that. To Clint, it sounds like he's saying _I could, but why should I want to?_

There's no more food in his stomach, only bile. Still it doesn't let up. “I'm knocked up, Jay.”

“Congratulations,” JARVIS says, and his tone is AI-neutral and doesn't betray anything about what's running around his core processors. “I believe this is generally a cause for celebration.”

“Generally's the word,” Clint mumbles and flushes the toilet. It's a bitch, getting back to his feet. His hips ache from sitting awkwardly on the floor with his legs splayed, and the painkillers are wearing off, making his leg throb in time with the pulse in the back of his throat. “I don't think 'generally' features an assassin who's also my boyfriend's ex-bestie, yeah?”

“Perhaps not,” JARVIS concedes.

Clint washes his face with cold water. It stings his palms and his cheeks. “Look, just- don't tell Tony. Please. If that's in your power, being his AI and all, I'd just really like for you to... not tell. Until I do.”

The pause he gets this time is the longest Clint has heard from JARVIS. He can't even imagine how many scenarios and loops the system must be charging through right now.

“... Certainly, Clint,” JARVIS says.

“You're the best, Jay.”

~*~

_“You smell really good,” Clint says, half delirious._

 _“Mi know, babes,” Davina says and holds his hand. There are sparks of pleasure lighting up between their fingers, and Clint can hear her breathe and smell the coffee she had this morning and he_ wants _, he doesn't even know what he wants but he does, more than anything he's wanted before and it's terrifying, and it hurts his face hurts his body hurts and Davina smells_ so good _._

_Quiet murmurs and a cold towel against his forehead. He smells the ink on Davina's fingers, the bundle of herbs she flicks across her own eyes each morning to 'help her see what can't be seen'. A knock on the door._

_“Mi a still done busy,” Davina says, quiet enough not to send sparks off inside Clint's head. “Nuh badda mi.”_

_“It's me. I wanna see him.”_

_Clint doesn't know how much of the herbs are the bundle, and how much is just the way Davina smells to him. Creak, creak, unbuckle of lock._

_“Him well sick, pickney,” Davina says._

_It's Barney; he smells sour with emotions Clint can't pick apart. He tastes bitterness on his tongue and coughs. His body sighs with something._

_“I had it worse, my first time,” Barney says. He's standing right by the bed; Clint can feel the warmth of his body._

_“All a di Omega dem seh,” Davina says drily._

_“Barney,” Clint says, sighs, groans. His tongue is stuck inside his mouth, dry and rubbery._

_“I thought you'd be Alpha,” Barney says. He doesn't touch Clint, doesn't comfort like he did sometimes when Clint was small. Smaller. “That'd fix everything. Why are you so fucking useless?”_

_Barney's sad, Clint thinks through the haze of everything. He smells angry and on the verge of tears._

_“ 'm sorry,” Clint mumbles. He thought he'd fix everything too. Instead, Tyler and the others will probably start smelling up Clint too, leering and touching and waking him up with hungry hands._

_“Yeah,” Barney says. “Sure.” He leaves without saying anything else._

_“Barney,” Clint says, manages to open his eyes to squint at his brother. They're still together. They're two now, and Clint is older. Stronger. He has a bow. “Help?” They can help each other._

_Barney stares at him for a long time. Then he walks out of Layna's trailer and slams the door._

_Davina curses and pushes Clint back down on the cot. “Feel no way, mi chargie,” she reassures him. “Him only badmind yuh.”_

_When she gives him her hand again, Clint clings to it and wishes it was his brother's. He sweats and shivers and claws his way through his heat, and when it's over and he thanks Davina and goes back to the ground workers' tent, Barney is gone._

_He doesn't come back._

~*~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Patois (Jamaican Patwa) translation:
> 
>  _Mi a still done busy_ – I'm still busy
> 
>  _Nuh badda mi_ – Don't bother me
> 
>  _Him well sick, pickney_ – He's very sick, child/kid
> 
>  _All a di Omega dem seh_ – All the Omegas say so
> 
>  _Feel no way, mi chargie_ – Don't you worry, my friend
> 
>  _Him only badmind yuh_ – He's just envious of you
> 
> Please let me know if I got any of it wrong <3


	10. Steve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings: Mentions of torture, implied forced body modification, and period-typical homophobia with an A/B/O twist.
> 
> I'm trying to get a chapter out every week or so, but so far it keeps clocking in at two weeks! Sorry about that, guys :P

_“Should you still be drinking?” Steve asks, mild but not joking._

_Bucky stares up at him blearily. The bottle of something undefinable in his hand is almost empty, and yet he doesn't seem that drunk; he's been bleary like that since Steve found him, chanting his own name, number and rank. It's been weeks, and Bucky still hasn't lost that glint in his eyes that reminds Steve of the rats around their old apartment. Hungry, desperate, wild despite having lived their whole lives in the city._

_“I'm not drunk,” Bucky says, and it's true; he sounds more disappointed than slurred. “Can't seem to get there anymore, matter how much I drink.” He lowers the bottle and his head until they both_ thunk _against the scratched-up table._

_Steve sits down opposite him and claps his shoulder lightly. They're alone, but you never know who might be watching. They don't do anything, don't even hug, unless they're in Steve's tent under the guise of talking strategy._

_“I can't get drunk anymore either,” Steve says. He means it as a reassurance, like how they're in this together, but it just sounds wistful. “Haven't been able to since the serum.”_

_Bucky raises his head to squint at him. “You mean this shit's permanent?”_

_“Wouldn't know,” Steve says honestly. There isn't much to be known about Bucky's condition at all, these days. After the Hydra facility blew up, there's no way to get documentation on what they did to him._

_Steve hasn't told anyone – not even Bucky – that Bucky smells different. He can only tell when they're alone, skin against skin, Bucky's breathing shallow against Steve's collarbone. When Steve brushes his lips against Bucky's temple, feels the short, prickly hairs there, he can pick up the trace of metal in Bucky's scent. Baked bread and quicksilver. Asthma cigs and dead flowers._

_Bucky tilts the bottle towards Steve, and Steve grabs it to take a swig. It burns, same as it used to, but once the heat hits his stomach, it dissipates into nothing. Like he never drank in the first place._

_It used to annoy Steve how much of a lightweight he used to be, but he thinks he'd prefer that to the heavyweight he is right now._

_“You coming to bed?” he says eventually, and Bucky shakes his head._

_“Can't sleep. Never seem to be able to, these days. Too much noise.” He taps a finger against his temple. He's starting to get crow's feet, so soon, and small wrinkles around his mouth that makes him look perpetually worried._

_Or maybe he_ is _perpetually worried, Steve thinks to himself._

_“Don't gotta sleep,” he says lightly. It's a come-on, and a cheesy one at that, but it's idle. They can't just have sex, even if Steve's tent gives them a semblance of privacy; sex is loud, and it smells, and it's on their records how they're both Alpha. Steve knows Peggy wouldn't mind working with a gay Captain America, but the same might not be said for the guys here._

_Steve would never risk Bucky being stripped of his rank, anyway. America needs Steve, needs his supersoldier body – but Bucky is dispensable to them. They already left him to die (and worse) once; Steve is never letting that happen again._

_Bucky smirks at him, but too tired to be raunchy. “Is that true,” he says and gets to his feet. His walk is perfectly steady, like he's been drinking water all night._

_They head to Steve's tent and climb into bed together. Ever since Steve got Bucky back, he's been the one to hold him close, within the confines of his arms; Bucky is smaller than him now, in ways he's never been. Smaller in mind, smaller in body._

_Steve falls asleep easily, calmed by the quiet bustling of night patrol outside._

~*~

Steve doesn't go back home to the Tower that night.

By the time the night watch clocks in and the two other scientists leave the observation room – all giving him funny looks – Phil has still not been down with Steve's come-as-you-please pass. So Steve sticks to his guns and his promise; he gets a couple extra pillows from one of the chairs, puts one under him and one behind his back, and plants himself on the floor opposite the glass. From his vantage point, he can see the entirety of Bucky's cell; the fake mirror covers the entire wall, from floor till ceiling.

He stays there. He stares at Bucky while Bucky stares at nothing, and neither of them go to sleep.

~*~

_It's still dark in the tent when Steve wakes up. There's a chill on his chest that tells him Bucky isn't there, and that's undoubtedly what woke Steve up in the first place. When he sits up and looks around, though, Bucky hasn't gone far._

_Bucky sits on the chair opposite him, elbows on his knees and uniform on. His face is turned towards Steve, but his gaze is far off._

_“Buck?” Steve murmurs._

_Bucky doesn't reply. In fact, there's no indication he even heard Steve; the only movement is the slight shift of his shoulders as he breathes in and out._

_Steve slips out from under the toasty blankets. He walks up to Bucky, whose gaze hasn't changed at all, and puts a hand on his shoulder._

_Bucky twists away from him, faster than Steve's seen him, and clamps a hand around Steve's wrist. He punches Steve hard in the abdomen with his free hand and pulls at Steve's wrist; Steve lets himself be dragged forward and onto the floor, the two of them scuffling until Bucky straddles his chest and curls his fingers around Steve's throat._

_Steve stills. It's never happened before, this sudden violence, and he doesn't know what to do with it. It looks like shellshock, but Steve isn't sure what brought it on – if Bucky is really so far inside his own head that he doesn't recognise his best guy._

_Something clears in Bucky's eyes. “Stevie?”_

_“Yeah, it's me, Buck.” He tries to sound calm, even though his voice is scratchy._

_Bucky releases him slowly, like he thinks he might be dreaming. “What'cha doing on the floor?” he says._

_“You kinda put me there.” Steve sits up when Bucky lets him. “You okay?”_

_Bucky looks down at his own hands and lets out a lost laugh. “You know what, Steve,” he says, “I don't think I am.”_

~*~

They stare at each other through the glass. It feels like it, anyway – rationally, Steve knows Bucky can't see him. He wonders if it would've helped if the glass worked both ways. If Bucky's eyes would soften and he'd say “Stevie?” in that same, dazed voice he had when Steve found him tied to a torture table seventy-something years ago.

Or if he'd stare at Steve the same way he almost does now; dazed and cold, like a stranger. Like a robot, wearing the skin of someone Steve still dreams about growing old with.

The door opens and Phil walks in. It's morning already; when Steve glances down at his watch, it shows just after five. “Captain.”

“Coulson.”

“Had a pleasant night?” Phil asks, but there's no sting to it. He walks over to where Steve sits and offers him a hand. “The system has been reprogrammed to let you down onto this level and this room. _Only_ this room.”

“Thanks,” Steve says and takes the offered hand. He's a little stiff from sitting cross-legged all night, but the twinges barely start before they fade away, courtesy of the serum. Steve almost misses lingering aches – or he would, if he hadn't been shot in the chest just a couple months ago. That had been lingering enough, even for his enhanced system.

“Has there been any changes?” Phil asks, even though he probably looked through the security footage before coming down here.

It's a persistent rumor that Phil never sleeps, and if Steve didn't know Clint – and Tony, that one time – slept right next to him at regular intervals, he might have believed the rumor too.

“No,” Steve says. “He's been like this all night.”

Phil nods. “He was sedated when we brought him here, but he hasn't slept since. It's been almost three days by now.”

Steve doesn't say anything, just lets the worry gnaw at his stomach.

Phil looks at him for a while. Then he huffs and looks through the glass, where Bucky's still frozen. “Captain,” he says, measured, “would you like to say hello to him?”

~*~

_There's a knock outside his tent._

_“Come in,” Steve says, putting together the last of his pack._

_Bucky peeks in through the flaps. “Permission to enter, Captain Rogers?” His voice is all business, but there's an insolent grin on his face that makes Steve's heart thump. It's been a long time since he's seen a smile like that, even that dim and stretched._

_“Permission granted, Barnes,” Steve says and secures the straps on his backpack. “You all done?”_

_“Yup,” Bucky says. As soon as he's inside the tent, he comes over to Steve and puts his hands on Steve's hips. “Got a few hours to spare before we head out.”_

_Steve grins. “Good to hear, soldier.” The tent flaps aren't secured, so technically they could be discovered any moment. Even so, they kiss, and there's even a particular sizzle in his stomach, enjoying the secrecy and taboo._

_It's a second-best feeling, when they can't have the comfort and familiarity of an officially sanctioned relationship. Sometimes, Steve entertains the idea of telling Phillips, just to see what happens. Or even going on another USO tour and bringing out Bucky after he's punched Hitler; just pulling Bucky close and kissing him in front of soldiers and civilians and the whole, wide world._

_Then he imagines being forced into an air-tight contract for the government and sent around on Omega-pickup-tours all across the States. He imagines Bucky being dragged off to the asylum for loving a guy of the wrong assignation._

_Steve holds Bucky just a little closer._

_“You okay, Stevie?” Bucky murmurs. Close as this, Steve can smell the metal on him._

_“Yeah,” Steve says. “I just- I love you, so much.” They don't really say it, they're not the talky kind when it comes to this. But the Howling Commandos are heading out tomorrow and_ you never know _, and besides, there isn't gonna be another chance to do this for a good while._

_Bucky stills, like he's spooked, but then he leans back to look Steve in the eye. “You going romantic on me there, Captain?” He grins._

_Steve rolls his eyes. “Well, not when you're like that, I won't.” He pretends to shove Bucky away, knows it'll make him hang on tighter and laugh, low and safe._

_“I love you too, kid,” Bucky murmurs._

_It's like Hydra never happened._

~*~

There are two armed guards by the door. They flank Steve when he puts his hand on the door handle. It's shaking. Come to think of it, all of him is shaking a little, but Steve can't stop it. It's like a bad twitch in his eye, except over his entire body.

“Whenever you're ready, Captain,” Phil says. He's behind Steve, close enough to be comforting – and, Steve suspects, close enough to tackle Steve to the ground if Bucky attacks.

 _He won't,_ Steve wants to tell him, but he knows that's a lie.

He can hear the quiet rustle of the armed guards as they change position. They don't smell like anything – nobody here does. Steve understands, but it's still unnerving. 

He opens the door. It beeps quietly, and Steve counts five little lights by the side that blink green. He walks inside, followed by Phil and the two guards.

As soon as Steve steps across the threshold, Bucky lifts his head. They lock eyes. There's a moment, one infuriating, hopeful moment that Steve _knows_ Bucky will recognize him and smile.

Then the smell hits him. A tangy scent; a mix of gunpowder, cauterized wounds and chloroform. No bread. No cigarettes.

Nothing Bucky at all.

~*~


	11. Tony

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this is so late, guys, but... well, long story short, my rabbit died. So it hasn't been a good few weeks.
> 
> (It's better now, though.)

Tony loses himself in work. It's good, it's been a while. He needs this. Not to mention that he's behind on about twelve of his own inventions and schematics, and that's not even counting all the stuff he's supposed to do for SHIELD and SI. Nineteen projects, he sees when he checks his index. Eight of which are already past their deadline.

“It's cool,” Tony says to himself and JARVIS equally. “J, shout out every twelve hours, okay?”

“Yes, Sir,” JARVIS says. That's the last either of them say; Tony turns up the volume of his usual work music, puts his welding goggles on, and turns off his social brain.

~*~

_“Talk to me,” Tony says._

_“What about, sir?” Edwin says, clearly amused. He looks at the voice box on the table with curiosity, and folds his arthritic hands. Tony's offered to build him a new pair of hands – he's done extensive research on artificial limbs since he first started noticing how much Edwin's fingers cramp up in the cold – but Edwin keeps politely refusing._

_“Explain tennis to me,” Tony says._

_Edwin laughs._

_Usually, when they talk, it's Tony who bears the brunt of the conversation. It inevitably ends up being about science, one way or the other, and although Edwin comments and asks questions, he rarely blabbers on like Tony's wont to do. But today it's not about Tony, it's about Edwin. More specifically, it's about Edwin's voice, and that means Edwin gets to talk about what he loves most of all, which is – to Tony's eternal confusion – tennis._

_“What do you need my voice for, sir?” Edwin says and prods carefully at the little metal box._

_“Surprise, Ed,” Tony says with a grin. “You know I never spoil surprises.”_

_So Edwin talks. He explains the finer point of tennis to Tony, who knows them already but listens anyway, and the voice box records it all and stores it on his fledgling AI's hard drive. Tony might call it JARVIS, if he can find words that fit the abbreviation – make it an homage, of sorts, to Edwin. It's been the two of them for a few years now, since Tony inherited the mansion and Obie left to run Stark Industries and just about everything his parents had built._

_Edwin makes them a cup of tea while he talks. Tony hates tea, especially chamomile, but he drinks it anyway because it's Edwin's favorite. Edwin smells like chamomile to him; chamomile and cinnamon and hot cups of cocoa. He always has._

_“Ed?” Tony asks after half an hour of serves and backhands._

_“Yes?”_

_Tony taps his fingernails against the rim of his half empty cup. “Why did you become a butler when you knew you were Alpha?”_

_Edwin is quiet for some time, his face contemplative. The voice box hums, barely audible even in the silence. “I suppose I never liked the implication that I should_ not _be, given my gender.” He quirks a smile. “The idea that only Betas should be in the service business was always baffling to me.”_

_“Were you surprised?” Tony asks. “When I first presented?”_

_Edwin laughs. “A little, I suppose. You always seem to prefer the hard way; it would not have surprised me, sir, if you had presented as Omega. I am confident that you would have been as stubborn and pigheaded as you are now.”_

_Tony laughs at that, too. The voice box glows green._

__

~*~

The hours blur together nicely, they way they do when he's getting real stuff done. JARVIS makes him come up for air every twelve hours, and it's three bouts of those before the light in the workshop short out abruptly.

Tony's not welding or anything potentially dangerous, so he doesn't bitch about it. He just puts down the screwdriver and cracks his spine. “Really, J?”

“Yes, sir,” JARVIS says. “Please get some rest.”

“Alright, alright.” Now that he's thinking past blueprints and security backups, he can feel the strain across his shoulders and down his back. He's got the usual headache from breathing in fumes for too long, and his hands tremble when he shakes them. Definitely sleepy time.

There's a bed waiting for him in the back of the workshop, and the thought is really inviting, but Clint is upstairs and Steve might've come back by now. JARVIS would've told him if that happened, but he might've done that without Tony noticing. It wouldn't be the first time important messages (usually from Pepper) got lost that way.

Tony half sleeps in the elevator ride up to the apartment. When he's like this, high on adrenaline and lack of sleep, everything is hazy and blue-stained and beautiful. He smiles to himself, and doesn't think about the Winter Soldier.

It's day. Sunlight streams through the windows all along the west side of the Tower, and Tony squints towards it. Clint is sitting by the window, half curled up with his leg sticking out awkwardly. He looks miserable and tired, but he smiles when Tony enters, like he's happy to see him.

“You crashing?” Clint asks, and Tony nods through a yawn. “Got lots done?”

“So much,” Tony says and creeps over to him. He kind of wants to put his head in Clint's lap, but that would fuck with his broken leg, so Tony just kind of lounges next to him. “Cap isn't home yet?”

“Nah,” Clint says, quiet. “I haven't heard anything at all.”

“Yeah, no,” Tony says and rubs at his face. “Probably still trying to communicate with his boyfriend through the one-way mirror, I guess. If Phil hasn't kicked him out by now.”

“Yeah,” Clint snorts. “Those puppy eyes would- wait, boyfriend?”

Tony startles a little, not realising he was falling asleep until he hears Clint's double-take. “Yeah?”

“Bucky Barnes? Bucky Barnes is- what?” Clint looks like a kid who someone just pushed off his bike for no reason.

It makes Tony rewind the conversation a little. “Wait, you didn't know? You weren't there when Steve told? Barnes and him were secret lovers during the war. It's all very romantic and tragic.”

“But,” Clint says in a small voice, “Barnes is an Alpha.”

“Yeah, hence the 'secret'.” Coffee. He should get coffee. Or sleep. Or both. “We really didn't tell you?”

Clint's face closes up. “No. You really didn't.” He looks out the window. “No wonder Steve won't leave his side.”

Something scratches at his insides, but Tony ignores it. He's good at that.

~*~

_He's contemplated chucking the entire voice box, but he's been contemplating for a solid month now, and that means he won't do it. It's not real, it's not the real thing, but it's gotta be close enough._

_Tony shoves the little metal box into its rightful place and secures it inside the power panel. It glows a muted yellow when it connects to the system, and the power panel closes up of its own accord. Tony steps back, arms crossed defensively in front of his chest. It's not cold down here, the basement is always temperature regulated, but he feels cold all the same._

_“Thank you, sir,” says the voice of Edwin Jarvis, and not his voice at all._

_Tony shrugs. He tries not to make his face do stuff, but there are a couple cameras around, and they must pick up something._

_“I apologise. If my current voice pattern causes you any discomfort-”_

_“It's fine,” Tony says curtly. Then, again, softer: “It's fine, JARVIS.”_

_There is a silence that speaks of calibration. “It is customary to offer condolences after the loss of a loved one,” JARVIS says. Like he's seeking confirmation, building emotional repertoire, learning._

_Tony shrugs again. Words hurt his mouth, he doesn't want to use them these days unless he has to._

_“My condolences, sir,” JARVIS says._

_“Yeah,” Tony says. It's been four months since the funeral. Obie left for New York again on tuesday. He didn't even ask how Tony was doing with his 'little project'. The house was too big for two and now there's only him living here, him and a baby AI with a dead man's voice._

_Dummy rolls up to him and pokes him awkwardly with his claw. “Go away, Dummy,” Tony says, without heat. Instead he leans closer, maybe, and Dummy pats him on the head a little too hard. It hurts. Tony doesn't yell._

_“Do you wish for me to put on one of your favourite movies, sir?” JARVIS says._

__No, _Tony thinks._ I want you to make me a cup of chamomile tea. __

_“Sure thing, J,” Tony says. “Whatever.”_

~*~


End file.
